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Comment by raw_anon_1111

21 hours ago

Really? You don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to share their location with the government?

I get the reflex to deny permissions (and I also get the reflex to allow anything, in the interest of just getting the annoying pop-up to go away), but it's really tiresome that we have to expect people to avoid thinking even the least bit critically at every juncture.

If you're filling out a form with the express purpose of letting someone know specifically where something is... a request for location information is reasonable, duh. And I won't accept the "people are busy and don't have the time and energy to think this through" excuse. If you're taking the time to fill out this form, then yes, you have the time -- seconds, at most -- to think this through in this particular case.

  • Right because that has worked so well with PCs over the last 40 years. Do you remember the people that had a dozen toolbars on their browser because if bundleware? Not to mention viruses and ransomware.

If a state environmental agency asks you for your location on photos that you volunteered to upload and you freak out, you might be mentally ill.

  • I wouldn't take it that far. For most users we spoke to, its often a reflex to deny location privilege popups, and on mobile it wasn't easy enough to fix once denied. However for some of the less-engaged folks who might be out in the park casually and stumbled on something worth sharing, the idea that we need their exact location probably sounded overbearing. "I told them which park I was in, that should be enough!"

    Yeah no kidding the vulnerable animal population is in the park, that's where all their threats are removed. But sometimes "the park" is 60,000 acres and it would be nice if you could help narrow it down.

  • Or the permission prompt isn't clearly worded or precise enough to understand whether you are allowing the location of this one photo to be shared, versus agreeing to some ongoing tracking...

  • You have way more faith in the government not using any information it has against you than I do….

    You have been paying attention to what’s going on haven’t you?

    • A government agency, which might even have good use for the data, isn't the problem. The problem is sending your precise location to Facebook and a two dozen silly little games and a note app, which all sell this data to anyone and their brother.

      By framing the problem as being with untrustworthy government agencies rather than with greedy data brokers selling data everywhere, you are part of the problem. You may distrust your government as much as you'd like, but before we solve the problems with private data brokers, we can never improve the situation.

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