this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 131 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I get the impression that many Gen Zers like to know where everyone is all the time. It's totally normal for them to have each other's GPS locations. Snapchat has a built-in map feature where you can watch your friends move around in real time, and there are other apps that offer this, too. I was blown away when I learned this was so commonly used and people just leave it on, so their social group just knows precisely where they are all the time.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I never really understood the "I have nothing to hide" mindset. I've always been for privacy. I self host everything I use, and when I don't (e-mail) I PAY someone to do it for me. No Google services in my life, no apple, etc, etc.

However, more and more I'm wondering if what I'm doing is worth it. Really, the people who "have nothing to hide" seem fine, nothing bad has happened, and it seems far more likely my information was leaked from a hack (credit carma I'm looking at you). Credit cards know where I am, what I buy.... Its endless. Plus now I have stress about my self hosted services going down.

So these guys who share their location and just live in blissful ignorance, are they on to something? I think life would be 'easier' for me on their side...

[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I never really understood the “I have nothing to hide” mindset.

This subject is best summed up by the Girl in Andrew Niccol's vastly underrated movie Anon:

"It's not that I have something to hide, I have nothing I want you to see"

This is the most intelligent, best articulated commentary on privacy I've ever seen and it fits in 17 words.

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[–] Pregnenolone 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The “have nothing to hide” crew still close the toilet door

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you need to find a happy medium. I've accepted that I can't control ALL the data I generate, so I instead aggressively block ads and any other marketing attempts towards me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah, it all boils down to your threat model. Not everyone has the time, resources, or know-how to self-host everything, so it’s about balancing convenience with privacy, which unfortunately is almost one or the other now.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

They'll learn the hard way. Hopefully the hard way is something serious to them but ultimately inconsequential like finding out a partner is cheating, and not like... being murdered.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

This is arguably the first generation that grew up with zero privacy. Being watched is normal to them - and absolutely horrifying for this Gen-Xer.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Horrifying for this millennial too.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

this gen x'er isn't keen on the idea, either. before the days of cell phones, the street lights coming on was the cue it was time to go home--and we could go pretty much anywhere in our (small) town. and later as a teen when we lived close to a city, all mom wanted to know was whether i'd be home for supper. there was no worry because every 'horrible' thing to happen to a kid wasn't published or broadcast for the world to see.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Aren’t Gen Z kids being raised by Gen X’ers? So wouldn’t it stand to reason that their parents are enabling and pushing this?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Yes. Strange isn't it?

Gen-Xers are also guilty of letting corporate surveillance happen, thereby letting their children grow under the watchful eye of big data.

I never said my generation was virtuous. In fact, I blame people my age for not affording the next generation what they themselves got to enjoy. Just like we blamed our boomer parents for enjoying the good life after the war and leaving us the crumbs. Little did we know the ones after us would have it even harder.

[–] ickplant 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mostly, but also younger boomers and older millennials. It’s not as straightforward as it seems when it comes to generations.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Article reads as propaganda. No way that zoomers are into this. This just sounds like justification for abusive parents to spy on their children. As a GenZ, I don't recall having a single friend with this kind of arrangement with their parents, but then again I mostly hung around the more questionable crowd where you actually needed privacy. Would really hope we stop bickering among generations and actually fight for privacy together

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

For real, how are Millennials falling for the same headlines that were used to spread stupid assumptions about their own generation a decade ago, but this time about Gen Z?

Contrast to you, I hang out with a pretty straight laced crowd, and we also don’t “track each other on Snapchat” like the article or the top comment here is saying because that’s fucking weird.

What’s gonna be the Gen Z avocado toast headline, I wonder…

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Article reads as propaganda

More like advertising. I'd put down a pretty big bet that Life360 sponsored this article and probably wrote a fair chunk of the copy, too.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (5 children)

GenZ here. I don't think so.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My family tried to make me install the Spy360 crap last year.

My GPS spoofer made them regret that 🙂. A few check ins all around the world later (and other chaos) and they basically asked me to uninstall it. Lmao.

It pays to be more tech literate than your parents.

Back on topic, I don't know very many people who have this thing who actually like it, so idk where the hell this article gets it's sources..

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Please tell me you're educating your family in privacy issues. This tracking circumstance is an excellent opportunity to approach it with a education mindset instead of the stereotypical kids/parents conflict.

Check out www.theprivacydad.com it's a great starting point for parents who don't know tech enough to realize what's going on.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

OP this post is just outrage bait. Business insider? Really?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Business Insider? Hardly knew 'er.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm 18 and fine with my parents knowing where I am so we can coordinate mealtimes and stuff. I really don't care for having a third party spy on me 24/7 though. We just Signal each other "I'm at xyz location, be back soon" and that's plenty enough.

[–] cheese_greater 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That sounds far more (and acceptably so in my view) stochastic tho, like, do they have on-demand "lets see where lol is right now even though I have zero need to know currently" or is it just like u verbally check-in when they Signal u?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

We just verbally check in and I'm totally fine with saying where I am. I believe the important thing here is trust. If, hypothetically, we were able to set up something privacy-respecting that communicated my GPS location to my parents 24/7, I wouldn't be a fan of it. It'd feel like my parents are monitoring me because they don't trust me to be truthful about my whereabouts.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (21 children)

I am Gen Z and I'm not fine with that. I chose to go to college far from where I grew up so that I would be independent and free and do stuff on my own accord, like buying a motorcycle.

[–] hansl 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The plural of anecdotes isn’t data. You not being fine with that doesn’t mean the majority aren’t.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

I know it's just some rag bait nonsense, but I know as a fact most teens would never want their parents to constantly know where they are and monitor them constantly.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Used to share my location with my dad until he kept sending me a McDonald's order everytime I was at McDonald's. Then turned it off, lol. My mum still has it.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Wow, the survey conducted by the company and spokesperson for the company all agree!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

I'm a gen zer and I would absolutely freak out. I'd rather not going out rather than being spied 24/7 by my parents. Seriously, this is the best way to kill trust between children and their parents. Now even the social relationship between parents and children has to be extremely toxic and anxiogenic as a basic minimum requirement

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[–] Sterile_Technique 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This comes off like those articles about how office workers "actually hate working from home - can't wait to return to office!"

Absolute bullshit.

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[–] Whelks_chance 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In this thread: people not understanding sampling bias. Of course everyone here likes privacy, and had friends who think similarly. It's a privacy themed community on a niche tech forum.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Conversely, the sampling done in the GenZ survey was by the tracking company (who you can probably wager have a bias towards anti-privacy...)

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I'm ok with my parents knowing where I am at all times(frankly, they don't care much about that which is good)

I'm not ok with meta knowing about it

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Im fine with my parents knowing where i am the only problem is that i would also share my location with big daddy google and im not fine with that. And my parents are divorced so i wouldnt share it with my dad... Also it would drain my battery

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean their parents have probably been tracking them since they were kids so they just grew up thinking it's normal, I also recently learned kids in school feel awkward if they aren't walking to class while on their phone because then they feel like people will think they aren't cool enough to have people to talk to at all times

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I recently saw a video clip by Josh Strife Hayes. He was talking about MMORPG culture, but it can be extended beyond that. It's about the inability of people to be bored and impatience. Old people can manage with being bored. They can spend an hour not doing much of anything. But the further you go in time, the less patience people have. And that's not because they are better or worse humans inherently, it's because they grew up in an society where things increasingly got busy. So it also isn't a binary old people/young people, but a progressing state of people getting blasted more and more with stuff.

This is to the point where there are YouTube videos where people cut away little bits of space between sentences just so there isn't even a second of calm. Social media plattforms just bury you under content and new content suggestions. A lot of games don't even want to risk downtime and just throw all kinds of random content at you for you to work through., quick travel so you won't have a few minutes of calm walking somewhere. Just content back to back with more content.

And this ultimately leads to way more stuff for you than you can consume and an inreasing fear of missing out on something if you're not constantly on the ball.

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[–] Gruntyfish 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The rest of Gen Z can speak for themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Speaking as GenZ (or Millennial, depends who you ask for the definition): fuuuuck that.

Speaking to the article specifically: I don't trust a surveillance vendor to work honestly when surveying the acceptance of their surveillance tool. The article also fails to mention (if it does, it's so brief I missed it) that the pressure some parents put on their kids to install and allow these kinds of spyware is immense. The kid having it on does not equate to the kid choosing to have it on.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Business Insider is straight AIDS

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There are more secure location sharing apps out there that are end to end encrypted. My family uses Zood location https://www.zood.xyz/ when we are out and about and needing to coordinate our locations. It is handy to use sometimes but it doesn't do all the spy stuff the other apps do.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

*rolls D-100* ... I disbelieve!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems really pathetic to me when parents can't offer their teens privacy. I have a child and I want him to trust me. Invading privacy feels like it would have the opposite effect and create a very one-sided relationship. You can ask my mom how much she knows about me now and its considerably less than my boxing mates.

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[–] TheInsane42 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, everybody with a phone can be followed... unless the leave the phone at home, forgeg toncharge it, ...

For every high-tech problem there is a low-tech solution.

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