I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse.
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cool. I am doing funded work for taxiteam and menschys and for redaktor (CMS) and Public Spaces Incubator (EBU and Public Broadcasters), fulltime, anyway :)
About places.pub - did post the code to federate OSM a long while ago https://gist.github.com/sebilasse/ca76c60955e5414cff2c253f1cd89af4
this snippet comes with a bunch of other modules.
An OSM to JSON-LD proxy like places.pub is super nice but what we need in taxiteam is a bit more.
Our database is a consolidated cache of OSM and wikidata knowledge but organized as hierarchical Collections, both political-administrative as well as by geohash.
So, if you are down to Country "DE"
https://gist.github.com/sebilasse/9b4c50bfabad43879c9c43c3adbe9ca1 it is a Collection of Federal States with its own id (2nd file).
With ActivityPub, we have the ability to define these hierarchies starting by Collection Q2 having the M49 regions as items with ['Collection', 'CollectionPage'] and that goes down to e.g. country/state/adm3/city/district/suburb/"hood" …🧵 1/3
The hoods have then all the street addresses, relations, boundaries like places.pub (with icons cached static etc. pp).
So, you know all the administrative parents from any address -
but what makes it really special is that any taxiteam instance could add info to any address (just as with your annotated places …).
As said, described it just very briefly in https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/issues/582
It includes federated _reverse_ geocoding too but Lat/Long would not be cool for this, so we use geohash for the Service Actor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash https://geohash.softeng.co/Let's see a practical example:
A new fair
taxiteam forms in any city to "FCK UBER". They install an instance and choose a geohash they would like to geocode.
E.g. the square for Hamburg and some other cites.
These might overlap, it doesn't matter cause geohash is strictly hierarchical too.
We do also have a server for all Germany by default, anyway:
The instance once fetches the cache of needed infos up to street addresses.
🧵 2/3 -
The hoods have then all the street addresses, relations, boundaries like places.pub (with icons cached static etc. pp).
So, you know all the administrative parents from any address -
but what makes it really special is that any taxiteam instance could add info to any address (just as with your annotated places …).
As said, described it just very briefly in https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/issues/582
It includes federated _reverse_ geocoding too but Lat/Long would not be cool for this, so we use geohash for the Service Actor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash https://geohash.softeng.co/Let's see a practical example:
A new fair taxiteam forms in any city to "FCK UBER". They install an instance and choose a geohash they would like to geocode.
E.g. the square for Hamburg and some other cites.
These might overlap, it doesn't matter cause geohash is strictly hierarchical too.
We do also have a server for all Germany by default, anyway:
The instance once fetches the cache of needed infos up to street addresses.
🧵 2/3Then it once sends an Update to all attached taxiteam machines meaning „Hey there, we are new and geocode ["u1"]“ (or ["u1r","u1w","u1x"]) then the network knows.
Now any taxidriver can add infos, warnings etc. directly.Next time when a user clicks on a map, we once decode Lat/Long to geohash, if your own instance doen't have it, it can ask the best suited option (e.g. serer proximity, load or trust).
As smaller the instance area is, as more detailed infos about em places ith might have :)
User now knows "You clicked on Fischmarkt Hamburg but unfortunately the area is currently flooded. Flashflood warning, go away" -
well, or maybe " … and your cab arrives in 1 minute" or "… cool exhibition nearby" or whatever.Sorry if I got either too complicated or short :)
We have frequent team mmetings, next is Saturday but I am also looking forward to the dev meeting with @reiver re. https://digitalcourage.social/@reiver@mastodon.social/115317680720978044🧵 3/3
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Interesting point. Age verification laws around the world are going to make everything a lot more tricky.
Though Mastodon's argument doesn't make sense to me: IP addresses inherently map to location data, so we all receive *some* location, whether we're listening or now.
I don't have a good solution for this, right now.
It'll probably need to be baked into new user registrations, which admins would need to choose in some way.
Do you have a solution you'd recommend?
@benpate
no idea, I imagine a lot of my answers involve fixing the laws themselves haha.Bluesky offloads some of that responsibility to the PDS (i.e. I can tell my PDS that I'm an adult and it'll tell Bluesky that I'm verified) so (very) long-term I think I'd like that sort of service provided by the C2S server, so clients wouldn't have to think about it.
But yeah, I'd assume you'd have to implement it during the registration process and have admins use a method of their choice for verifying age (and optionally let them turn it off entirely if they can confidently say that nobody from XYZ location will ever be using the site)
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I'll build whatever people say is most important. These policies will likely be up to individual server owners.
After spammers found Bandwagon, I've been kicking around ways to do moderation before profiles and posts become public.
But whether we're using maps or toots, the issues would still be the same. Bad actors will need to be identified quickly, and dealt with decisively.
I'm adding this into the project board. Feel free to pile on: https://github.com/orgs/EmissarySocial/projects/3/views/1?pane=issue&itemId=135226795&issue=EmissarySocial%7Cemissary%7C566
benpate@mastodon.social you may want a way to gain consent before allowing posting of a location + mentioned people. The other thing you may want to do is have moderation UI that allows searching for all notes for a specific location, and potentially banning the usage of certain locations in notes. i.e., if you see a doxing, then your mods can prevent that location from being tagged, and delete the note. If a person is tagged as at a certain location, they should need to accept the tag before that shows up in the Note.
You could also do things like limit posts being added within a certain region to a certain radius (based on geoip).
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Somewhat relevant, I believe mastodon's argument for not supporting age verification is that they don't collect location data and so there's no way for them to determine if their users are somewhere where age verification applies. I don't know how well that works on legal grounds, but probably worth thinking about if you're building social apps that require geolocation
tom@tomkahe.com said in I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse.:
> Somewhat relevant, I believe mastodon's argument for not supporting age verification is that they don't collect location data and so there's no way for them to determine if their users are somewhere where age verification applies. I don't know how well that works on legal grounds, but probably worth thinking about if you're building social apps that require geolocationYeah, this justification just doesn't pass scrutiny. Mastodon does collect the user's recently active IP addresses, and from that you can use geoip to resolve to a country/state. This could also all be handled by a FASP.
In other words, Mastodon could indeed implement age verification, the only remaining question is: what would that gate access to?
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Agreed, even if they didn't collect/save IP addresses, I don't think you could get around it just by telling a court you didn't want to collect that data. I imagine they'd just tell you that you need to collect it.
(looked up the source so I'm not just randomly attempting to quote things from memory https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/29/mastodon-says-it-doesnt-have-the-means-to-comply-with-age-verification-laws/)
The social nonprofit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
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@thisismissem @benpate i was also thinking how this is solved by the foursquares etc., aside from moderation. limiting notes to pois instead of arbitrary latitude-longitude-tuples may also be a viable strategy, and that might make it easier to figure out whom to even ask for consent, or who may be able to manage allowlists or similar mechanisms. not arguing to replicate that exactly, but remember foursquare mayors? the fediverse might have elected janitor groups.
i'm aware that i'm sharing half-finished thoughts, and i hope i'll find a bit more time for this.
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@thisismissem @benpate i was also thinking how this is solved by the foursquares etc., aside from moderation. limiting notes to pois instead of arbitrary latitude-longitude-tuples may also be a viable strategy, and that might make it easier to figure out whom to even ask for consent, or who may be able to manage allowlists or similar mechanisms. not arguing to replicate that exactly, but remember foursquare mayors? the fediverse might have elected janitor groups.
i'm aware that i'm sharing half-finished thoughts, and i hope i'll find a bit more time for this.
@computersandblues @thisismissem
Half finished thoughts are the best!
And, I know I'm dipping into some choppy waters here, but I think "consent" relates to what content the server wants to share, and not consent of the "property/location owner."
I recognize there's potential for abuse (i.e. doxxing someone) but that exists outside of a mapping app, too.
But there's also cool use cases for non-consensual digital graffiti.. something in the spirit of:
https://observer.com/2025/10/artists-indigenous-ar-intervention-met-american-wing/
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@thisismissem @benpate i was also thinking how this is solved by the foursquares etc., aside from moderation. limiting notes to pois instead of arbitrary latitude-longitude-tuples may also be a viable strategy, and that might make it easier to figure out whom to even ask for consent, or who may be able to manage allowlists or similar mechanisms. not arguing to replicate that exactly, but remember foursquare mayors? the fediverse might have elected janitor groups.
i'm aware that i'm sharing half-finished thoughts, and i hope i'll find a bit more time for this.
@computersandblues @thisismissem
But back to your original point, it could be interesting to roll up all of the notes about a particular POI, to say something meaningful about what's going on there.
That's probably out of scope for me right now, while I'm just learning how to make maps. But I'm making a note to research this some time down the road.
Fortunately, we have a lot of "closed source" research that we can lean on, then just cherry pick the best ideas and make them "open."
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@computersandblues @thisismissem
Half finished thoughts are the best!
And, I know I'm dipping into some choppy waters here, but I think "consent" relates to what content the server wants to share, and not consent of the "property/location owner."
I recognize there's potential for abuse (i.e. doxxing someone) but that exists outside of a mapping app, too.
But there's also cool use cases for non-consensual digital graffiti.. something in the spirit of:
https://observer.com/2025/10/artists-indigenous-ar-intervention-met-american-wing/
benpate@mastodon.social there's multiple levels of consent. If you create a post with me mentioned in it with my location, I should probably have to accept that post for me to be mentioned in it. Otherwise someone can see me out and about, and create a post without me knowing that gives other people my location.
Hence, to tag other people at a location, they should have to accept that tag:
- Allow anyone to tag me at locations (potentially unsafe)
- Allow my followers to tag me at locations
- Allow my following to tag me at locations
- Allow this specific collection of Actors to tag me at locations
- Don't allow anyone to tag me at locations.
This could be achieved through an interaction policy on the Actor (though that's not yet a thing? I think interaction policies in GTS are only on Notes/objects)
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Summer/Autumn 2025: Little coding, but lots of socializing and planning
At the first October weekend I (@linos) was attending the Berlin FediDay 2025. It was a meetup of the Berlin and German community, developers of Fediverse applications, and representatives of German speaking media institutions. It was great to see old friends again and meet some online contacts for the first time. We were discussing the future and the role of the Fediverse, which was super motivating. #FediDay
Two weeks later, I travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria, to attend this year’s OpenFest, give a talk and lead a workshop on how the Fediverse can help announce and discover events. Unfortunately, the talk didn’t attract much attention, as LLMs are currently drawing more of an audience. But the discussions with those in attendance were very interesting. The workshop was mainly about trying out #Gancio, #WordPress and #Mastodon and learning about the possibilities for local communities by trying out the applications themselves. I simply provided real test instances, created a list of tasks, including minor pitfalls, and, of course, answered all the questions that came up – and there were quite a few! And a big thank you to the crew and the organizing team, who were so friendly and simply wonderful throughout. #OpenFest
Yesterday, I had an awesome online meeting with the incredibly cool folks behind LAUTI, a free and open-source software for hosting small event calendars. #LAUTI is aimed at small and medium-sized communities and has a big focus on social, cultural and activist stuff. The instance for the Stuttgart area, run by the collective that develops it (@klasse_methode@chaos.social), can be found at https://einftopf.info. The developers are in the process of exploring the potential of #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse. I’m very excited and think this could be really great! In case you’ve been wondering: I see LAUTI kind of in between #Mobilizon and #Gancio. In my opinion, it would not be a competitor to them, but it could be a great addition to the Fediverse by filling this gap.
I will be at the #SFSCON in Bolzano, Italy, in two weeks. There will be a whole afternoon focusing on the Fediverse! So in case you’re there you’re invited to join my short talk about Interoperability of Events in the Fediverse: status quo and vision. Or you’re welcome any time to say hello and let’s have a chat.
After that, it’s time to sit down and get back to programming. But it’s very important to me to continually evaluate and understand what the priorities are, and to remind myself why it’s so important that we all continue our work in this area.
#ActivityPub #FediDay #Fediverse #Gancio #Lauti #Mastodon #Mobilizon #OpenFest #SFSCON #WordPress
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Thanks for the suggestion, Emelia! Yeah, this looks pretty close to what I imagine.
Another user shared your repo https://github.com/ThisIsMissEm/activitypds, does this have a similar goal or does it focus more on the auth side of things?
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Thanks for the suggestion, Emelia! Yeah, this looks pretty close to what I imagine.
Another user shared your repo https://github.com/ThisIsMissEm/activitypds, does this have a similar goal or does it focus more on the auth side of things?
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dominikhofer@social.lol Yes, this already exists. For instance Wafrn is exactly this. There's also one that does the same but from a AT Protocol perspective, translating lexicons into ActivityStreams 2 objects.
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benpate@mastodon.social there's multiple levels of consent. If you create a post with me mentioned in it with my location, I should probably have to accept that post for me to be mentioned in it. Otherwise someone can see me out and about, and create a post without me knowing that gives other people my location.
Hence, to tag other people at a location, they should have to accept that tag:
Allow anyone to tag me at locations (potentially unsafe) Allow my followers to tag me at locations Allow my following to tag me at locations Allow this specific collection of Actors to tag me at locations Don't allow anyone to tag me at locations.This could be achieved through an interaction policy on the Actor (though that's not yet a thing? I think interaction policies in GTS are only on Notes/objects)
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Video: Media Empire Trailer
Andy's Video Pub | original post: https://video.andyrush.net/video/media-empire-trailer/
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I love the excitement for new #ActivityPub based projects.
Maybe i'm wrong but 'loops will do for the fediverse what the iPhone did for smartphones' seems a bit out of touch.
Nothing wrong with being excited, but seeing how few people know of or care about Pixelfed still outside of Mastodon users who many have bailed for Bluesky, I think maybe, just maybe, the fedi is a hopeful echo chamber in a bubble sometimes.
#Reality #Fediverse #Mastodon #Loops #Pixelfed #TikTok #Instagram
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Just enable #ActivityPub on your closed platforms, you cowards. Nothing prevents this. People won't leave if you're actually better. #SocialWeb
