I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse.

[benpate@mastodon.social]

I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse. In about two weeks, we've gone from crazy on I70 to a fledgling app that lets me annotate any location on the globe and share it over #ActivityPub

There's still a lot to do. But there's enough here for me to ask for your help. I would love to hear what you think of this short video, and to start talking to everyone out there who's interested in making maps on the Fediverse.

https://clip.place/w/4JHMF5FQoZw58UPwL6BLyv

[benpate@mastodon.social]

I'm expecting this kind of street-level annotation to have lots of uses, from groups of friends replicating #FourSquare, to communities organizing events, or citizen #Journalists recording what's going on in their neighborhood.

Please share this with anyone who might benefit from sharing location notes online. It's time for me to start collecting some needs from real-world users.

https://github.com/EmissarySocial/atlas

[sl007@digitalcourage.social]

@benpate

Sure, doing taxiteam for the german yellow cabs. Described some aspects in https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/issues/582

Would be interested in finishing the federated geocoding part together.

[julian@activitypub.space]

benpate@mastodon.social this is super super cool. Are you integrating with places.pub as well?

cc evan

[johannab@cosocial.ca]

@benpate Ben this is so impressive!

I can’t come up with coherent comments or questions just now but I’m definitely tuned in and pondering how this connects to all my Future Cities/civic tech tangles.

Cc @samnabi this is one of the “somebody had an idea sometime around FediForum two weeks ago and now there’s a whole new dimension…” things I was trying to explain. I will include Ben’s FediCON talk in what I send you, as well.

[groupnebula563@mastodon.social]

@benpate ooh!

[osma@mas.to]

Better Atlas than the other one. A couple of questions:
- are you envisioning this to be a federated Foursquare or Yelp?
- inserting location tags to people's posts increases their personal data exposure quite a lot. What privacy implications do you see here?
- I didn't catch in the video what is the identity model you're basing this on. New identity on Atlas, or a tie-in to an existing fedi identity?
@benpate

[julian@activitypub.space]

osma@mas.to benpate@mastodon.social I'd assume that if you're using Atlas that you're explicitly aware that the location data is being broadcast out, yeah?

I'd imagine it to be akin to an opt-in mechanism.

[osma@mas.to]

I think we have enough evidence by now to know that even people who should have training to know better, accidentally reveal too much on apps, and that location is a particularly sensitive item.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1978942.1979295

https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a40358143/strava-israeli-military/

https://www.securityweek.com/fitness-app-strava-gives-away-location-of-biden-trump-and-other-leaders-french-newspaper-says/

@julian @benpate

[mradcliffe@nokoto.org]

@julian @osma @benpate  I don’t think that an app should tie my physical location to posting about a location, and it is not necessarily true that you need to be there to talk about that location.

And that could be anything from trip advisor like blog posts and reviews to boosting and chatting about social activism or events happening at a location.

For example, I may want to location tag Yosemite when writing about the current lack of funding to protect the land from human aggression. Or I would want to do so when writing about my experience at the top of Half  Dome decades ago as part of a shared human experience.