ITT: Big Tech is mad you’re not having babies, Big Pharmacy is mad you’re not taking pills

Paper calendar, pencil.

digital cycle tracking technologies also come with serious risks, including wasted time and labour, unwanted surveillance, risks to health data privacy, and may distract from or even threaten efforts to advance women’s health

Those don’t seem like such serious risks… privacy, yes; but that’s an overall huge problem in current year. I would be more concerned about your TV recording every conversation you have about your reproductive organs than an app tracking one aspect of it.

Wasted time is not a serious risk or a harm; it is an opportunity cost.

I think the better point is that these criticisms could be applied to nearly any phone app.

Yeah, this seems like a sort of position paper for a medical association. Here it’s less about serious harm and more about a general lack of benefits.

These apps are all interconnected in that everything gets sold and eventually ends up in the Palantir databse entry for you.

They are all dangerous.

Alternative's exist btw.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abhilabs.lunavi

And

f-droid.org/…/ch.nilsgrob.android.bluemoon

Use Drip, Use Mensinator. There are alternatives. Open source and FOSS.

I talked my wife into switching, some google app to drip. She loves it! Helps so much at the doctor’s office and helps predict when to expect monthly pain.

Both apps are fantastic. I find Mensinator easier to quickly input data and its simpler with the same functionality. But both are very nice though. I use both apps side by side just in case input errors or mismatches. So far so good.

Who the fuck uses this shit and why? I can’t imagine adding another pointless microtask to my life so a bunch of people can mine my period info.

I do, because I have chronic health issues that require me to monitor these types of variables. I also use it to predict my next period so I can prepare and so I can be a bit kinder to myself. I use Drip though so everything stays on my phone and that bunch of people won’t mine shit.

If it was me, I’d just open my calendar and schedule a “massage”. Maybe switch terms with “pedicure”.

Or do those apps have more features than just dates?

My memory is so bad I definitely need to write it down if I want any hope of knowing where I’m at in my cycle. I also used to try to track more symptoms, which helped me learn a lot, but now I just do the minimum. A physical notebook or even notes app would work just as well, but I just do better if it’s on my phone and like the visual calendar. And also use Drip so not worried about the data getting out. I agree you don’t need any fancy apps, but don’t like the implication in the article that tracking at all is useless.

Aside from their weak evidence base, digital cycle tracking technologies also come with serious risks, they write, including wasted time and labour, unwanted surveillance, risks to health data privacy, and may distract from or even threaten efforts to advance women’s health.

Never used one, never will but come one, wasted time is not a “serious risk”. They basically say it’s useless (which is not true, simply knowing when next cycle starts can be useful in itself, no need to sync diets or anything) but try to sensationalize it as something dangerous. Just say it’s bad for privacy, why make things up?