NPR85%
The social etiquette of sharing location87%
By Brittany Luse0% Liam McBain0% Neena Pathak0% Mika Ellison0%
12/3/2025, 8:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Framing Effect, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 35% saturation with 215 hits. Analysis detected 1,331 faulty-reasoning hits from 614 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 79.9% and a BS Rank of 87% (2,328 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 86.20% of the article peer group.
Is location tracking building relationships?
Or ruining them?
Four in 10 U.S. adults share their locations with at least one person.
But while it's convenient, is it also a violation of privacy?
And who really needs to know where you are?
We're getting into how location sharing became a norm, the pros and cons, and how to turn it off without making things weird.
Brittany breaks it all down with Gina Cherelus, New York Times styles reporter and writer of their Third Wheel dating column, and Tatum Hunter, internet culture reporter at The Washington Post.
Episode Highlights
Digital intimacy
HUNTER: I like the term digital intimacy because it reminds you that just like other forms of intimacy, it comes with some risk.
Just like physical intimacy, for example, it can be really awkward to say no…You're never going to convince people that this isn't super convenient, and in a lot of cases, really fun, especially if you live on a campus or in a city.
It's so easy to keep tabs on the people you love and meet up with them, and know that they're safe.
But I think my question for people is always, at what point would it become inappropriate for you?
Because otherwise, as with all matters of digital privacy, we're like these frogs in the boiling water, where there never comes an obvious moment where this overreach — whether it's the government's digital surveillance or corporations or our friends and family and loved ones — where it becomes too much and inappropriate and we do decide to draw that boundary.
How much of my digital life is my partner or my parents or my best friends entitled to?
And at what point would I start declining?
Setting boundaries
CHERELUS: I think because of the importance we've placed on it, that means it is something you should talk about with the person who you deeply care about.
If you're choosing not to share it with them – especially if you know that they'll care – they might feel some type of way or they might be left confused or abandoned by it.
That's not really kind…
I don't think that it has to be a deep conversation, but I would just shoot them a text like, "Hey, FYI, I'm removing locations because I'm now becoming more concerned about my own personal privacy, and I just want you to know it's not personal."
A new definition of privacy
HUNTER: I think that because different people's preferences for privacy would be so different, a good definition of privacy is the freedom to choose.
Privacy is the freedom to choose what you want to share.
So many of our conversations about digital privacy, I think, would benefit from being consent-based.
I see companies, for example, all the time, saying we protect our users' privacy by doing X, Y and Z.
But the users had no say in any of this.
They didn't get to opt out.
They didn't even really get to opt in, except by using the product or the service.
So I think if we were able to move toward an understanding of privacy where everyone really guards closely that ability to say yes or no to each piece of information about themselves that they share, we would be closer to something healthy.
Privacy is the ability to go off the map when you choose.
This episode was produced by Liam McBain.
It was edited by Neena Pathak.
It was adapted for web by Mika Ellison.
We had engineering support from Becky Brown.
Our Supervising Producer is Barton Girdwood.
Our Executive Producer is Veralyn Williams.
Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.
Analysis
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