It seems Gen Z is just fine with parents knowing where they are all the time
It seems Gen Z is just fine with parents knowing where they are all the time
More American families are downloading and using location-sharing apps, and that may be connected with rising levels of anxiety among Gen Z.
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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.
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...
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.
"It's not that I have something to hide, I have nothing I want you to see"
This didn't really resonate with me at all. Can you explain more?
When you says "resonate", do you mean you don't understand the sentence? Or do you mean you don't see why you should care?
Re meaning, the sentence seems blindingly obvious to me. But maybe it isn't... It means you don't want privacy because you have something illegal to hide in your house, but because you don't want to invite anybody in. I really don't know how to explain it anymore clearly without repeating it verbatim.
If you don't see why this is important or you think it doesn't concern you, send me your address and I'll come around tonite to take pictures of your furniture without your permission.
I'm a bit off-put by your tone, but no, I was being genuine. Saying it doesn't resonate means whatever was said doesn't seem as profound or meaningful as it does to the person who said it. So the phrase really means that you want to shut everyone out? I guess that makes sense, given the hostility in your response.
You read me wrong my friend. It was nothing more than an honest-to-goodness reply to you. No hostility. Be careful with written discussions, because you don't see the face of whoever is writing and you tend to slap the state of mind you yourself are in when you read it. Imagine I'm writing this with a smile and that's pretty much how I wrote it.
You don't find the quote profound and that's fair enough. To each his own opinion. Me, I think it's a perfect description of the core issue of privacy: having the choice not to expose what I don't want to expose for no other reason that I don't want to. I don't want to shut everybody out, I want to freedom to do it if I so choose and not have to justify myself or suffer consequences.
Maybe I'm easily impressed :)
The “have nothing to hide” crew still close the toilet door
The reason I close the toilet door is mainly because I know others don't want to witness me peeing. If they didn't care, I wouldn't care tbh. Everyone's priorities regarding privacy are different, but I think for every person at least something feels private.
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I don't know, it's not like it's a secret what I'm doing in there. Going to the toilet looks very similar for most people I assume, so it's not like someone with decent imagination couldn't know what it looks like anyway. I don't see the huge difference in whether the door is open or not other than politeness.
To be fair, arguably that is more of a sanitary issue that you don't want your poo poo particles spreading all over your house each time you flush.
ain't no one closing the door for that reason
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.
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.
This is kind of my point. I don't feel there's a happy middle right now and unless you go tinfoil hat information is going to get out.
My threat model is basically "do my best to be as private as possible". But there is limits. I can spend $100 cash on gas or I can spend $100 on my credit card and get 2% back. Obviously I'm going to use my credit card. I still email people who use Gmail, People who have the facebook, instagram, X, etc on their phone has me as a contact, likely with my full name, email address, physical mailing address.
So why do I bother keeping my contacts in a selfhosted NextCloud? Why do I avoid the Google Maps app, or anything google when the wife uses all this stuff and I'm with her 90% of the time? I'm starting to think they have my information already anyway so why not welcome google into my life? I have to keep talking myself into the fact that self hosting is worth the extra work I'm causing myself.
Unfortunately it depends on the individual, so no one can really answer your question but yourself. For me, I draw the line when it personally becomes burdensome to maintain something. For example, I use Bitwarden to manage all my passwords, but I don't trust myself enough to host and maintain a server and keep it online/secure, so I use their hosted service. I use google drive to store some miscellaneous stuff because of the free 15GB storage, but I don't store any private files (personal photos, documents, etc.). I use ProtonDrive for more important stuff, and for very confidential files, I encrypt them first. I use google maps for navigation because of reliability and accuracy, but I use a separate google account for it. I know that doesn't do much, but it keeps some level of separation for me personally. I still maintain a facebook account (although I barely use it) because of family, but I still use a facebook container on firefox and don't use the mobile app. That plus all the privacy extensions.
The main thing is that it doesn't have to be black or white. You don't have to go full hermit, and at the same time you don't need to fully embed yourself into the google ecosystem. Just do what you can and what you are comfortable with. As they say, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yeah I think the bigger problem here is that it’s this hard to have reasonable privacy and governments like it that way. They don’t need a warrant to buy info, just to force release. I don’t like google knowing everything about me. I hate the cops being a check away from it.
For me it boils down to principles. You're totally right and many companies I hate will have alot of my info due to others, but I'll be damned if I cooperate with them.
Yeah maybe it’s growing up in the closet, but yeah. My wife knows where I am in general all the time, but only because I give her heads up. Nobody else knows more than they need.
It’s not even that I have anything to hide. Aside from not letting my in laws know we’re poly or other such things I’m not really hiding anything. I just don’t see why anyone should know. If someone insists on knowing for no reason then that’s weird and not cool.
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.
Seems a perfect tool for organized bullying. What could go wrong.
Google Latitude was doing this in 2009 and I knew millennials who used it. Much more widespread now, though.
Gen Z here. I have Apple's Find My location setup with my closest friends only (and my mom). I don’t have a reason to hide my locations to my friends, it helps with casually meeting up actually. “Oh XY is nearby, let’s meet and hang for a bit” And my mom has my location for emergencies and vice versa.
I disabled the snap map though as I have people on there that don’t need to know my location.
Hey now, don't assume we all do that. I don't need the people I talk to knowing that the only places I go are work, my house, and the Chinese food place every other Tuesday. They might think I don't have anything to do with my life. They would be right, but I don't want them thinking it!
Yeah. I'm Gen Z. I was really taken aback when my high school friends had apps on their phones that showed their real time locations to each other. I was like "WHY?" and they responded along the lines of "Well why not?".... I have no words...