There is no alternative to AirTags which doesn't take up additional space or come with major downsides. The way AirTags work is by using low power ultra wideband communications to respond to what are effectively ping packets which get sent out by apple devices in the area. The devices get the AirTag's ID and the distance and submit it to Apple for processing. Apple uses the distance information to trilaterate the AirTags and sends this information to the owner of the tag.

As such, AirTags only work because of Apple's market position and extremely wide reach. Put simply, Apple is abusing their control over their devices and the trust their users have placed in them to perform a form of mass surveillance.

Tile works the same way but just with bluetooth. Any phone with a tile app on it is snitching on every tag it sees. Apple of course wins here because it's just every damn iphone, not just the ones that have an app installed.

As someone who has used both the airtag is just plain better when it comes to locating it, the uwb stuff is awesome. But the tile tags have some upsides as well. I love the button on the tile that you can use to ring your phone, helps solve ye olde.. i have my keys, where's my phone problem.

AirTags encrypt the location data end-to-end between the finding device and the Find My app on the owner’s devices. There’s no mass surveillance, unless you count masses of individual users surveilling their own AirTags.

So Apple is abusing their control over devices by making devices that work well together?

I fail to see any abuse or mass surveillance. “Find my” is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple does not have access to the device location or anyone’s identity:

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...

Samsung has smart tags but they probably have the same or similar issues as Apple tags.