Convener: Mike Waggoner (@herebox@onewhilshire.la)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Manton (@manton@manton.org)

• Bob Wyman (@bobwyman@mastodon.social)

Notes

Summary

• Existing Activity Stream 2 (AS2) Vocabularies

  • Object - location property

    • https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-location

  • Object - Type - Place

    • https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#places

  • Object - Type - Activity

    • https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Arrive

    • https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Leave

    • https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Travel

  • Fediverse apps with location support

    • https://gath.io - Events

  • Schema.org - Place (including geo-shape)

    • Maybe too much / kitchen sink

• Next steps

  • Try pushing data using existing Activity Streams 2 (AS2) fields to Fediverse ( e.g. Mastodon )

  • Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEPs)

    • Propose an extension to protocol or data model

    • https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/

  • Write / extend Fediverse app that uses the existing AS2 data model

    • e.g. Add to Firefish?

Agenda Topics / Discussion Ideas

• Privacy

  • People are often surprised / cautious to share location

  • Risk to safety if location is shared by default or unintentionally

  • Option to opt-in

  • Photo metadata - e.g. filtering exif

  • Backlash from users / Risk

  • Privacy context might change after some amount of time ( e.g. public check-ins after some delay )

  • Approximate location as a part of ActivityPub semantics (radius field)

• Use Cases

  • Dots ( e.g. Foursquare / Swarm )

  • Lines / Paths / Stream of GPS Coords ( e.g. Strava )

  • Sets of Un-Connected Dots ( e.g. Public Art in a region )

  • Areas / Geofencing ( e.g. Geoloqi )

  • Presence

  • Events ( e.g. gath.io )

  • Followed who are in a similar location

  • Followers, Strangers, Lists

  • Sending messages to a geofenced area

  • Approximate location sharing

  • Private tracking with delayed public location sharing

• Existing Efforts

  • AS2 - Activity Vocabulary - Location - GPS coordinates on the Location object

    • https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-location

    • Location exists for any object

      • long & lon + altitude

  • Place object that is used as the location object in the ActivityStreams2 (AS2) specification

    • Mastodon doesn’t support Place objects.

    • Whole section, 5.3 Representing Places https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#places

      • radius

  • Mastodon Issues from 2016-2018

    • https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/8340 - GPS Location in Toots (not linked to images)

    • https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/281#issuecomment-1321138657 - GeoTag toggle for post (Enhancement)

  • No known “first-class” Fediverse project where location is the primary data focus

    • Similar use-cases (Events gath.io)

• Implementation Ideas

  • Extend open source

  • Ingest existing commercial

  • Add interface to include location data in a post ( e.g. to Mastodon )

    • We are unsure what the result of sending location data into existing services will be (e.g. will Mastodon display it ??)

  • Automate reading metadata from posts ( e.g. exif data, links to mapping service )

  • Location Data Store

    • Commercial stores ( Foursquare, Google, Facebook )

    • Open Street Map

    • Reverse geo-coding

      • e.g. https://github.com/tomayac

  • Data Models

    • AS2 - Place

    • Indiweb - hCard / vcard

      • https://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

    • Schema.org - Place

      • https://schema.org/Place

  • Meridian - Project based on OpenStreetMap data to make easier API to build apps on

    • https://latl.ong/

    • Generally - Need more tools to push new locations back to the existing databases

  • Stream of GPS Coords

    • Example of storing a path over time - icecondor.com/b/

  • Draft Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP) to extend ActivityStreams Place object with additional fields

    • https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep

    • Consider pointing to Schema.org Place?

    • Narrow profile of just the basic fields most people need