My ex forced me to install Life360, so he could monitor my movements. I was okay with it at first because it was sold to me by him as "reciprocal" -- I could also see his movements and a way to build "trust". But of course, his location would be turned off when he didn't want me to see what he was doing. So I turned mine off, and an argument ensued. We kept the app for a few more weeks before I had enough and just deleted it one day.
Afterwards, I wondered how many people have that exact story with Life360? For some people, it likely causes more problems than it solves as it did in my case.
What was also interesting to me was that in order to see the history of someone's locations past a certain point, you needed to pay for their premium service. It can't be an accident they chose that as a hook for their conversion funnel -- under what circumstances would a user want to use that feature? My guess is they arrived at this through a lot of A/B testing but could probably care less what the actual circumstances are of its use anyway.
> My ex forced me to install Life360, so he could monitor my movements.
> I could also see his movements and a way to build "trust". But of course, his location would be turned off when he didn't want me to see what he was doing.
I don't know either of you, but this makes me feel like the app helped you dodge a bullet, because I bet he would've been just as much of an ass via different methods without it.
PSA: If you are in an intimate relationship and they try to force anything like this on you, this is a huge red flag. Best practice: View saying no to this as a hill to die on as in "You are free to leave, but I'm doing no such thing." (Edit: Though obviously don't pick a fight unnecessarily. This should be an internal metric, not a position you broadcast.)
My partner and I use apples “find my”, I know other couples that use it too.
At least in our case, no one pressured the other to set it up, and it hasn’t caused any issues so far.
I think it comes down to trust, I think setting up something like this can certainly quickly draw attention to trust issues in a relationship.
I've heard others do this as well. Some people use things like WhatsApp's/Google Maps' location sharing 24/7, others use the find-my features baked into their phones' OS. The people I've heard use this feature all do so because one person decided to share their location just in case, with no pressure for the other to reciprocate. Then the other realizes how useful it can be to estimate when their partner will be home/where they are at a large event, so they turned it on as well. I've also heard from at least one person who turned on location sharing where their partner didn't (or only did so periodically, i.e. when driving somewhere), and that wasn't a problem either; he simply respected his partner's wishes and for all he cared his partner could've never turned the feature on in the first place.
Being pressured makes all the difference here. As long as you can freely disable the feature without judgement (or worse), I think it makes total sense to consider location sharing inside a household. If you and your partner are totally fine with sharing your location and the idea wasn't introduced because of some kind of trust/jealousy/control issue, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Afterwards, I wondered how many people have that exact story with Life360? For some people, it likely causes more problems than it solves as it did in my case.
What was also interesting to me was that in order to see the history of someone's locations past a certain point, you needed to pay for their premium service. It can't be an accident they chose that as a hook for their conversion funnel -- under what circumstances would a user want to use that feature? My guess is they arrived at this through a lot of A/B testing but could probably care less what the actual circumstances are of its use anyway.