To share or not to share
How consensual is location sharing anymore?
By ABHINAYA KASAGANI — akasagani@ucdavis.edu
In the years leading up to college, I prided myself on having little interest in any form of digital correspondence — or even in using my phone as a technological companion altogether. I was occasionally fascinated by the promise of email and how it made one wait a full 24 hours before they felt entitled to a response, but even that was minimal.
College, however, changed this. As I grew increasingly fond of being online, I became less able to snap myself out of the long spells of trance into which screens had put me.
To the friends I made in college — or, nowadays, even those who’ve known me for all of 45 seconds — it comes as no surprise that I am a longtime proponent of location sharing; one would think I had been commissioned by tech companies and data brokers to do their bidding.
Although it had originally felt as if it was the access I was drawn to, which allowed me to know how the rest of my day would unfold at a mere glance at my screen, it was more than that. While some may feel as if the normalization of location sharing squashed their own attempts at privacy, I didn’t feel particularly stifled by loved ones keeping tabs on me. Instead, it allowed me to offload the responsibility of informing people of my whereabouts onto my phone; I no longer had to be committed to the machine.
However, this predicament is not wholly uncomplicated — the same technology that enables us to have such access to each other forcibly demands a portion of data for itself. The boundary of consent is virtually nonexistent, seeing as how all forms of data — whether that be smartphones, apps or networks — are persistent in their surveillance of their citizens.
The distinction between digital intimacy and involuntary disclosure becomes crucial to understand; location sharing does not exist in isolation. Instead, smartphones and applications routinely collect and retain information on users for purposes unrelated to their original interaction. While government surveillance is not always involved with commercial and private data collection, it can sometimes become convoluted.
In attempting to regulate its citizens socially, the government (and participating companies) make it so that opting out of this means losing access to our ordinary social and professional lives. In this case, while users may technically agree to a set of terms or choose to enable their location permissions, they can’t selectively opt out without having to refuse other features that streamline their lives — think functionality, convenience and social or professional communications. Not only does this inadvertently affect one’s social sphere, but it simultaneously makes it more difficult for them to enthusiastically participate in the world.
Although the most common retort to this predicament is that one could always just opt out of sharing their data, our way of living has made that altogether impossible. Our worlds have shifted from the individual to broader technological infrastructure that demands we all constantly have access to one another. We fail to recognize that sharing our whereabouts was originally intended to be a mutual negotiation of our relationships; something that only needed to be interpersonally determined. Under this logic, the question tends to be: To what extent can the act of location sharing be thought of as consensual, especially if we have not particularly consented to participate within a larger surveillance system?
The very definition of privacy enables its participants to excuse themselves from unwanted intrusion. While location sharing offers us the illusory comfort of knowing our loved ones are safe, it does little to accommodate those it makes uncomfortable. In this way, denying citizens the ability to consciously decide whether exchanging convenience for the social and psychological consequences of constant surveillance is a worthwhile trade-off calls into question the conditions under which people are implored to choose for themselves. Consent cannot freely exist inside a system that doesn’t allow its participants to meaningfully participate, instead yielding to the empty, commercial pandering of influential corporations that benefit from the spread of misinformation.
Most days, I can come up with no good reason for why I am so charmed by the idea of technological access as a gesture. Our inclination toward digital intimacy is altogether fascinating: How much digital access are we willing to give our partners and friends in return for their companionship? In her article for The Atlantic in defense of location sharing, writer Kaitlyn Tiffany notes that what made the shared location so alluring was not the promise of safety at all, but instead “the sense of shared plot, by way of literal plotting.” The rhetorical quality of the question “What are you doing right now?” can be wonderful to have, once again standing as the illusory promise of community and intimacy.
It comes as no surprise that most technological developments have eroded our personal sense of privacy over time, and location sharing — which stands as an extension of our individual interpersonal relationships — conveys the extent to which we mutually trust one another. Trust is ultimately what made the prospect of location sharing so appealing, with our levels of digital intimacy with one another curbing us from likening access to surveillance. While the act of sharing your location isn’t inherently coercive, our inability to truly regulate who has access is. Here, the larger question becomes not about whether the ability to say no exists, but whether “no” remains a viable option.
My fondness for location sharing hasn’t dwindled much, despite my awareness of the consequences of using my phone. I do, however, feel more stifled than ever by the inability to decline surrendering my privacy to participate in modern society. Constantly being surveilled has made it so that the convenience oftentimes feels worth the compromise, and choosing otherwise feels privileged. Here, it remains crucial to acknowledge that what serves us doesn't always have our best interests in mind; If participation in modern life increasingly requires our data to be generated and tracked by default, can our choice to allow it be genuinely voluntary? Ultimately, the question becomes not about whether we value convenience but whether we can find ways of doing so without trading in parts of ourselves.
Written by: Abhinaya Kasagani — akasagani@ucdavis.edu
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