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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

> This assumes that "track the location of your child/spouse/whatever 24/7" is a useful and positive feature that someone with good intentions would make. I think that's on the spectrum from misguided to abusive, depending on the details.

That seems... completely reasonable? Like, if I had a way to passively give my family my location that I trusted, I'd use it (that is, I trust my family; I'm less convinced about Apple, Google, Android OEMs, 3rd party companies/apps).

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I'm not worried about people giving their location data to their family, I'm worried about people that require it from others in their family.

This is going to be mostly used by people who want to know where their kid is every minute of the day or are super suspicious or controlling of their partner. I'm sure the sex trafficking and other really terrible stuff is incredibly rare, but the 'intended' usage of the service is already Orwellian. The location tracking anyway, the emergency stuff seems alright, but it's all pretty bundled together as far as I can tell.

When I was taking some history class, the professor noted that the veil for women was a huge boost to female freedom when it was invented because prior to that most women were essentially prisoners in their own home. The veil allowed them to go out in public.

For some people, it is likely used to give a child more freedom than they otherwise would have and if it is taken away one option is to just keep them home, which is potentially more problematic than tracking them.

Do we have data on that? How much it gets used to expand freedom while trying to keep an eye on the kids electronically?

That's an interesting idea; surely it can go both ways though. Inventing the veil in a society where women must stay home moves things in one direction, doing it in a society where women roam free is another.

I hope we're still at a point where (most) kids get a baseline level of autonomy and freedom that scales with age, and it feels like these kind of apps erode that. But I've got no hard data on it. I had parents that gave me a good amount of trust and autonomy, and that meant a lot to me. I made bad decisions a few times but I learnt from them, and overall I was responsible enough. I'm trying to prepare my daughter for the world and I'm worried for how many of her peers might grow up thinking this kind of tracking is reasonable.

My kids had less freedom to roam than I had for reasons having nothing to do with me. The world has changed. Parents cope as best they can.

For some, that likely means using a tracking app to give the child privileges they otherwise would not be granted.

For us it's never been about trust, spying or faith or anything. We often say things like: "let's meet at the park in half an hour; spy on me" and then everyone knows which part of the park the others are at. The first one to arrive sits down and listens to the birds a bit and the others just walk over, as if we were living in some glorious future where we are constantly connected.

It's also convenient when someone is driving: "I'll pick you up in about 20; spy on me". Maybe there is no good parking spot so it's great when the family member is awaiting at the side of the road for a quick embarkation.

My location is shared with quite a few friends and colleagues. I don't quite see the problem with my _location_ being known. Maybe we just have boring lives, with too few secret lovers, secret-society meetings behind hidden walls in underground bars … ?

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