Instagram users are voicing concern their whereabouts were shared without their knowledge despite Meta saying the feature is opt-in.

Instagram’s new location-sharing update is raising privacy concerns, with users reporting their whereabouts were shared without their knowledge despite Meta saying the update is opt-in.

Experts warn that location-sharing features are linked to a higher risk of tech-based coercive control.

The controversy follows other recent privacy issues for Meta, including a lawsuit over the misuse of sensitive health data from a women’s health tracking app.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 months ago

    I know I’m preaching to the choir here…

    Privacy isn’t something that corporations or the government gives to you. It’s something that you have to create and protect for yourself.

    Installing a meta app on your phone comes with an agreement (which you read, right?) where you give up all of the privacy of your phone in exchange for apps that make you feel bad about your income, life and relationships while also being misinformed and angry about current events. It’s such a terrible deal where you lose everything in order to send pictures to your friends slightly more efficiently (Signal Stories work just as well but are end to end encrypted)

    It’s like letting a narcissist live with you who constantly berates, insults and lies to you in exchange for them occasionally telling you how your friends random people that you really don’t care about are doing.

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Signal Stories gets so much hate (and I don’t really like it either) but it’s the only form of private social media.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
      1·
      3 months ago

      nobody needs to install it nowadays, because it comes preinstalled on all phones. and lots of people just mindlessly allow every kind of permission

      • FlappyBubble@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 months ago

        Is it really preinstalled on all phones? Not on iphones and neither on my Samsung S22 or my Pixels.

        • 7toed@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          Android is the devil when it comes to it. My S22+ certainly did have “Meta App Manager” and “Meta Package Installer” hidden as system services, which could only be removed using ADB.

  • tgcoldrockn@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    “recent privacy issues”… all facebook companies were surveillance companies from inception. supporting any of them is supporting a surveillance capitalism behemoth for now 20+ years.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      True. Facebook from its inception as Facemash was a way for creepy, misogynist slimeballs to ogle and “rank” women they went to school with against their consent by harvesting public databases. “It was just a prank bro.” —Mark ‘Real Human’ Zuckerberg

  • Nate@piefed.alphapuggle.devEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Contacted a bunch of people to tell them to turn this off. None of them knew. Hope they get the absolute fuck sued out of them

    • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      3 months ago

      Still does. This article should have been a PSA about an on-going issue with multiple apps, but they insisted on a villain to blame as somehow being worse than others. All of these apps will randomly and repeatedly ask to enable such things; They have done so for years and years.

  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’m just shocked that people are still shocked…

    This has been a WhatsApp thing for ages…

  • Zak@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    There was a time Facebook chat would share precise locations with every message by default. None of the people who sent me their location along with a message knew they were doing that when I told them.

  • alexdeathway@programming.dev
    0·
    3 months ago

    I don’t use Instagram, so I’m out of the loop. What’s going on? As far as I remember people were always allowed to mark thier location in post.