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by Dystopian 2268 days ago
I feel like this would be a lot easier and have a higher rate of usage/compliance if our tech companies actually worked with people to release or opt-into sharing this information for when it's necessary (information which is already secretly shared with governments for security).

For the majority of people if they go to https://www.google.com/maps/timeline they'll have a tracker of everywhere they've visited and the time they were in each location.

If you could take people's accounts who've been infected and give them the ability to opt-into sharing this information you could have a pretty good source of information about the locations where they dwelled for long periods of time and who should go into self-isolation.

2 comments

I don't think anyone trusts Google enough. They can help by providing governments with anonymized data they already have. Immediately what comes to mind is identifying to governments public hot spots while lockdowns are supposed to be going on so that they can send people to disperse the gatherings. I'm sure people can come up with better ideas
I don’t in my case because I’m not comfortable with the commercial information that gives Google.

One of the gestures I think Google could make in this fight is to allow people to opt into that data sharing on a strictly limited basis. I’d opt in if it was only going to be provided for the purposes of medical infection contact tracing while this pandemic is rife.