I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse.
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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)
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@thisismissem Yes, you're raising some important points that we should cover. And, it's easy to see the potential for someone to post harmful content on a map.
But I don't see it being any different from posting harmful content in any other medium they have. Witness the dude live tweeting celebrity plane locations.
Fundamentally, people *should* be able to talk about others behind their backs. Maps or not, if they post data they shouldn't, then it's probably an issue for server mods, yes?
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I read up on Interaction Policies. They're a great idea, but it looks like these are requests that only work if other servers enforce them.
I'm suspicious of things like this that can't be enforced beyond my own server because (as we've seen too many times) only the good guys will follow the rules, leaving the bad guys with an unfair advantage.
