[throwawayReply]

Much of it isn't voluntary.

People are sold a phone to which they provide some details including social media logins and install some apps.

They then carry their phone around with them not realizing that the phone is automatically uploading it's location to various services.

If you were to poll people, "Does having Facebook installed imply your location will be broadcast to Facebook 24/7?", I think you might be surprised to find out that even despite that leading question that people in fact don't realize that.

To use an adroid phone requires a google account to which your location will be transmitted. You can ask google to stop this happening but then you're back to the issue that people need to be aware this is even happening.

In tech circles people are well educated about this particular issue. More widely this is less well known.

[Karunamon]

Much of it is. Facebook claims that the data Geofeedia was accessing was publicly shared, as in, not related to the location pings used by the service to find nearby friends.

That means pictures and posts with GPS data attached (read: willfully created by the user), unless there's some kind of proof that this company had a level of API access that goes beyond the level any other developer can access.

People oversharing is a huge problem.

[ryandrake]

Yea--I would love to live in a world where we aren't all forced to have "social media logins" in the first place!