3 ms·

It continues to amaze me that OpenStreetMap is not massively plagued by this (I know that MapBox uses OSM as one of many sources, as mentioned in the article, b

by lqet 8y ago

It continues to amaze me that OpenStreetMap is not massively plagued by this (I know that MapBox uses OSM as one of many sources, as mentioned in the article, but the changed name did not appear in the live OSM map, afaik, so I am guessing it came from somewhere else). In the past, the main explanatory argument was always that OSM's complicated editing process was the gatekeeper, but I don't think this is true anymore. With the OSM web editor, it is extremely simple to edit the map. It would only take a few clicks to immediately publish (for example) a highway in the form of a swastika to the live map, but despite using the map multiple times per day, both for private use and professionally, I have never encountered something like this.

thinkingemote 8y ago
It was spotted and fixed within 24 hours in OSM (about 30 days ago), that's the power of a community driven map. Mapbox don't keep their maps up to date, and probably used a snapshot of the data which happened to have gotten in the few hours before it was reverted.
- lqet 8y ago
  Do you happen to know the OSM relation ID that was affected? The "New York City" relation [1] does not have anything related in its history [2] [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/175905 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/175905 [2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/175905/history https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/175905/histor...
  - untog 8y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if it was purged from the history. Otherwise might it imply that New York City was once given that name, historically?
    - thinkingemote 8y ago
      OSM doesn't record historical changes of that kind (as in differentiating it from any other edit) and the nature of a change in that way. Although one might be able to infer actual geographical changes from comparisons. It just concerns itself with a snapshot of "now".
    - rmc 8y ago
      No, the bad edit in question is still there. OSM only "redacts" changes when there is a copyright problem. The licence was changed in Sept 2012, so there are lots of redactions from before then from people who didn't agree to the new licence. The OSM history of an object shouldn't really be seen as the historical status of the thing.
  - rmc 8y ago
    Labels like that are often from place=city nodes. Here's the node in question. Compare v60 (the vandalism) with v61 (the repair) https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/61785451 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/61785451
- rmc 8y ago
  It was fixed within 2 hours on OSM.
thinkingemote 8y ago
Facebook are doing some interesting things both having a team curate the OSM maps, and using ML to identify vandalism. Types of vandalism include both shapes and words. I'm not sure if these specific tools are included. From what I recall, results of vandalism are checked by humans to weed out false positives. There was a surprising number of bad edits around the world! FB (like Mapbox) don't keep their OSM based maps up to date, instead they make sure it's safe. They think that's a very important, and have developed a lot of tools to do that. I'm not sure if Mapbox promise to have their maps safe and curated, they just stopped updating them frequently.
gagege 8y ago
I think the reason is that OSM doesn't have a very large number of non-tech users that are apparently fun to piss off. If a /b/ type group isn't going to get a rise out of a decent number of people, they wouldn't consider it a funny target. Mapbox is a product aimed at less tech-savvy users, so it's more likely to be a victim of trolls.
- have_faith 8y ago
  But a /b/ type group would love the idea of habbo-hotel style raids drawing swastikas in landscapes, perhaps at a scale that isn't immediately obvious. It makes me wonder how much subtle and hard to detect vandalism would appear if OSM became more popular (as a user facing product comparable in mind-share to Google Maps). I'm imagining wikipedia style edit wars over land ownership borders etc.

by lqet 8y ago

thinkingemote 8y ago

It was spotted and fixed within 24 hours in OSM (about 30 days ago), that's the power of a community driven map. Mapbox don't keep their maps up to date, and probably used a snapshot of the data which happened to have gotten in the few hours before it was reverted.

lqet 8y ago
Do you happen to know the OSM relation ID that was affected? The "New York City" relation [1] does not have anything related in its history [2] [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/175905 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/175905 [2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/175905/history https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/175905/histor...
- untog 8y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if it was purged from the history. Otherwise might it imply that New York City was once given that name, historically?
  - thinkingemote 8y ago
    OSM doesn't record historical changes of that kind (as in differentiating it from any other edit) and the nature of a change in that way. Although one might be able to infer actual geographical changes from comparisons. It just concerns itself with a snapshot of "now".
  - rmc 8y ago
    No, the bad edit in question is still there. OSM only "redacts" changes when there is a copyright problem. The licence was changed in Sept 2012, so there are lots of redactions from before then from people who didn't agree to the new licence. The OSM history of an object shouldn't really be seen as the historical status of the thing.
- rmc 8y ago
  Labels like that are often from place=city nodes. Here's the node in question. Compare v60 (the vandalism) with v61 (the repair) https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/61785451 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/61785451
rmc 8y ago
It was fixed within 2 hours on OSM.

thinkingemote 8y ago

Facebook are doing some interesting things both having a team curate the OSM maps, and using ML to identify vandalism. Types of vandalism include both shapes and words. I'm not sure if these specific tools are included. From what I recall, results of vandalism are checked by humans to weed out false positives. There was a surprising number of bad edits around the world! FB (like Mapbox) don't keep their OSM based maps up to date, instead they make sure it's safe. They think that's a very important, and have developed a lot of tools to do that. I'm not sure if Mapbox promise to have their maps safe and curated, they just stopped updating them frequently.

gagege 8y ago

I think the reason is that OSM doesn't have a very large number of non-tech users that are apparently fun to piss off. If a /b/ type group isn't going to get a rise out of a decent number of people, they wouldn't consider it a funny target. Mapbox is a product aimed at less tech-savvy users, so it's more likely to be a victim of trolls.

have_faith 8y ago
But a /b/ type group would love the idea of habbo-hotel style raids drawing swastikas in landscapes, perhaps at a scale that isn't immediately obvious. It makes me wonder how much subtle and hard to detect vandalism would appear if OSM became more popular (as a user facing product comparable in mind-share to Google Maps). I'm imagining wikipedia style edit wars over land ownership borders etc.