Scattered thoughts on social geolocation
9 hours ago
- The author wants to share location with friends on social media, noting that Twitter and Facebook had features, but ActivityPub and AT Protocol lack them.
- The GeoSocial Task Force is developing Geographical Microsyntax proposals for optional location sharing, but user research is needed to understand what people want to do with geotagged posts.
- Inline text microsyntax is problematic because users format inconsistently and location names are ambiguous; suggests text is for text, not syntax.
- Centralized location services (Google, Foursquare, Wikidata, OSM) have flaws; proposes latitude/longitude as a fully open, unrestricted alternative.
- GeoJSON is recommended for adding geographic information to post metadata, allowing flexible precision and additional properties like name or Wikidata ID.
- Future steps include user research, privacy advocacy, developer collaboration, and client implementation of GeoJSON metadata.