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Facebook acquires Mapillary
- hk__2 6y agoTranslation for those who don’t speak marketing: Facebook bought Mapillary.
- TomJansen 6y agoIs seems that they really do not want to admit that they have been bought. They make it sound like that they are in a partnership or something.
- rcthompson 6y agoI don't understand this decision. Do they really think that creative wording will keep people from figuring it out? And once people figure it out, the "creative wording" just makes them look dishonest. Is it just about preventing news websites from being able to use "FB bought us" as a direct quote?
- tempodox 6y ago> the "creative wording" just makes them look dishonest. I feel the same way. Whenever I see that kind of language I infer an undisguised attempt to mislead readers.
- TomJansen 6y agoI think they word it this way because they do not want to anger the OSM crowd too much (ie massively deleting their profiles & photos)
- kyawzazaw 6y agoThey are already getting started on that. https://framagit.org/Midgard/exit-mapillary https://framagit.org/Midgard/exit-mapillary
- Kiro 6y agoThis is not the announcement post but in the very first sentence it says "Today we announced that Mapillary has joined Facebook", linking to https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-Facebook.html https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-F... Seems pretty clear to me.
- Lammy 6y agoI agree that's pretty clear, but I can also see how "joins" can read like a partnership or some other collaboration and not outright ownership.
- moksly 6y agoThe real worrying part is that they think the creative wording makes them seem less dishonest than outright telling people that Facebook bought them.
- dang 6y ago(This comment was posted when the linked URL was https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jesolem/diary/393358 https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jesolem/diary/393358 and the title was "Mapillary and Facebook – Combining our open mapping efforts")
- wasmitnetzen 6y agoPrevious discussion from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564854
- dang 6y agoNormally we'd mark this one a dupe, but it looks like that thread was underwater the whole time (http://hnrankings.info/23564854/ http://hnrankings.info/23564854/), meaning it never made the front page. That's usually an indication of greater interest, so we'll leave this one up. Yes, it's on our list to write software to detect such cases.
- tempodox 6y agoNever heard of Mapillary, but does that mean that web requests to OSM shovel data to Facebook now? The article is too opaque and euphemistic to allow practical conclusions. Mapillary can “journey” wherever they want as long as they don't take me, as their non-user, with them.
- KaiserPro 6y ago> but does that mean that web requests to OSM shovel data to Facebook now? Other way round. Facebook pile a bunch of time and tools into OSM maps.
- maxerickson 6y agoNo direct impact on OSM services. Mapillary is/was a private for profit company that allows people to extract information from their crowd sourced photos and then add it to OpenStreetMap. So a road sign or business name or whatever. This arrangement encouraged lots of OSM users to contribute photos to Mapillary, as it is a nice way to add information to OSM (and to enable others to add information). The indirect impact on OSM services is that turning on the view of the Mapillary images in an OSM editor will request that data from Mapillary servers (which are now Facebook servers). So you can go to the OpenStreetMap website and engage in an activity where you request data from Facebook servers. But you have to sign in, activate the editor and then activate the view of the images for that to happen. A lot of the people that contributed heavily to Mapillary are disappointed with this outcome, as they have strong feelings about Facebook. I've contributed a little bit to Mapillary and will likely continue to do so, as I'm not trying to create an open data street view commons, I'm using it as a convenience.
- tempodox 6y agoThank you for that excellent explanation.
- blackboxlogic 6y agoit would take a lot of convincing for me to welcome Facebook into any project I'm part of. I've pointed out to one of their POs that they are violating OSMs copyright by not showing any attribution when browsing on mobile. I'm not confident it will ever be fixed. When they ask to be integrated into a project they're already abusing, the answer should be hard no. I'll reply to this comment if they start respecting OSMs copyright (unless comments get locked?). Just musing... but where do I file a DMCA?
- KaiserPro 6y agoIt will be interesting to see how effective facebook's rampup of"opensource" OSM infrastructure will be. They have bought other mapping companies, which on the surface look like they are able to generate city scale point clouds. Combine those with mapillary's very compelling annotation framework, and the resources to do street sign detection, it looks like Facebook/OSM will be able to dramatically lower the cost to entry for people wanting high quality fully featured maps. This is facebook of course, so it equally turn to shit. But one has to at least hope for a better outcome
- AlexTrask 6y ago5 edits on OSM since 2014 I can't see his interest on OSM
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's not incongruous to like and support OpenStreetMap and then also find editing tedious and so look for other ways to contribute. Like say using VC funding to create a company that makes tens of millions of photos available for people that are editing OSM.
- krick 6y agoUh, ok, but for those who never heard of Mapillary, what does that actually mean? Is it still something notable, even though we don't see it? I mean, Facebook buys tons of stuff, it's not always clear how a particular acquisition is interesting. FWIW, "Mapillary’s involvement in OpenStreetMap" part doesn't explain to me what this stuff really has to do with OSM either.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rvz 6y agoHonestly, no-one knows but Mapillary and FB. Given that FB is starting to enter into the maps arena with Google, Apple, etc I wouldn't want to know the sort of stuff that FB could do with it. It's too easy to think about the ugly side of this 'incredible journey' than it is to think about any good that will come out of this due to FB being 'FB'.
- thinkingemote 6y agoMapillary is basically the Google Street View part of OSM. There are a couple of other street view offerings though. Given that Google Maps was mainly built directly from street view (and gps) this is important. Additionally, recently, both fb and mapillary were using ML tech on images and maps to extract info for a kind of automated mapping.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoThough it's not "part of OSM" - it's an entirely separate project (set up as a VC-funded commercial entity, rather than a non-profit Foundation like OSM). It does allow OSM to use its imagery and API for mapping purposes.
- Krasnol 6y agoThat "part of OSM" describes the good relationship the OSM community had with Mapillary up until this moment. Also I'm quite sure if they hadn't "allow" OSM to use its images, their photo database would have been much smaller.
- lowdose 6y agoThis is probably related to Facebook Aquila [0] drone project with the ambition to deliver internet to the whole world. MVP successful in 2016 and more developments in 2020. With Tesla launching Starlink it wouldn't be a surprise with Zuckerberg's competitiveness that he upgrades this specific part in his gameplay. In the words of Jim Collins to maximize the impact of the limited supply of gunpowder companies should first try to hit the the target with a riffle and with the knowledge of a success, aim the canon and hit the target at first attempt. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Aquila https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Aquila
- jmkb 6y agoAdmins, consider changing the link to https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-Facebook.html https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-F... -- the current link implies that this is directly related to OpenStreetMap, when in truth it's just a blog ("diary") of a Mapillary employee hosted under his OSM user account.
- dang 6y agoOk, changed from https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jesolem/diary/393358 https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jesolem/diary/393358.
- adsadsads 6y agoPossibilities of this acquisition are endless. For instance, combine the location data in the Facebook App with the street view to identify which businesses people are at - and charge higher ad prices to those users who were previously saw an ad for that business.
- easytiger 6y agoDo they have street view equivalent data? My understanding was they have crowdsourced images/panoramas which are overlayed on a map using the geotags. I'm not sure how that's even useful as anything other than a curiosity. Perhaps I've missed something
- maxerickson 6y agoThey have enough images that it is more than a curiosity (they can do reasonable 3d point clouds of buildings in some ares). They also have quite a lot of software for extracting information from the images.
- jraph 6y agoOne can use OsmAnd a bit like street view in places where Mapillary images are available.
- easytiger 6y agoI had a look but found it doesn't at all work like streetview
- folmar 6y agoThere is also crowdsourced streetview-like continuous stream of street images, and some code to extract features.
- tuukkah 6y agoMapillary is cool technology and important to OpenStreetMap in many ways: 1) Satellite imagery only gets you so far regarding object visibility and recognition. 2) GPS locations and traces are inaccurate. 3) Google's ecosystem provides a street view and to meet expectations, OSM should have one too. Do you boycott React, which Facebook provides as Open Source as a contribution to the JavaScript ecosystem? Do you boycott Mapillary, which Facebook provides as Open Data as a contribution to the OpenStreetMap ecosystem? Many parts of the system are Open Source too: https://github.com/mapillary https://github.com/mapillary
- trynewideas 6y ago"You hypocrite! You claim an allergy to nuts, and yet you eat a coconut." Well, coconuts aren't selling user-collected data to Facebook. "BUT THEY'RE A NUT! IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME"
- tuukkah 6y agoMapillary does not have and is not selling personal data. Mapillary's main dataset is photos of (public) streets, and as openly licensed it was available for Facebook's use even before this sale.
- Tepix 6y agoThat‘s correct. They can collect more data about mapillary users now, however. Not a good thing. I don‘t think I’ll contribute to Mapillary in the future.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoPlease consider contributing to OpenStreetCam instead. https://openstreetcam.org/map/ https://openstreetcam.org/map/
- myself248 6y agoIt's on my todo list, to start running OSC again, as soon as I start driving places again. Car's still got gas in the tank from February...
- annadane 6y agoStop letting them buy companies. The lack of ethics and trust they have from people should preclude any of this from happening
- annadane 6y agoThose who downvoted me: how're you enjoying your job at Facebook?
- ATsch 6y agoI wonder if the OSM Community will draw any long-term conclusions about trusting especially VC-backed companies from the fate of both Mapillary and MapZen in the last year as well as earlier back-turns such as MapQuest. In these cases, it always seemed to me, as an occasional editor, like the OSM community was maybe overly eager to rely on services provided by external companies with not enough concern given to long-term risks. But beggars can't be chosers of course.
- maxerickson 6y agoI never really got into mapillary, but the uploads I have done have been with the mindset that they will be useful for a while and it's fine if exactly how long is hard to predict and so on. It'd be nice if there was an alternative where it was reasonable to think of the upload as a digital artifact. But there isn't, and street level photos are really useful for improving OSM.
- formercoder 6y agoThe only thing guaranteed about VC backed companies is that their investors are looking for outsized returns.
- jmkb 6y agoI doubt this will be any kind of soul-searching moment for the OSM community. OSM contributors make use of hundreds of different imagery sources from volunteer, corporate, and government sources. Few mappers will be particularly interested in the nitty-gritty of the funding. If the imagery is available with a compatible license, it will be used in mapping. If not, mapping will still happen, possibly more slowly. (On-the-ground survey is always the gold standard.)