OpenStreetMap
One day, in a certain neighborhood, there was a heated discussion about naming an unnamed road.
At first, the discussion was about deciding what name they should choose for the road.
But can you guess the final consensus of that discussion?
They preferred not to be mapped.
The status quo was good enough, they said. The road looked like a maze, with little or no clue on how to properly navigate it. They argued that if they named the unnamed road, it would give “outsiders” a clue on how to navigate it, which was “bad” for the internal security of the people who lived there.
This made me think about the ethical grounds of conducting large-scale mapathon campaigns remotely.
We generally work under the assumption that “the more mapped places, the better.” But what if the locals don’t consent to being mapped?
What if they prefer not to be mapped?
Discussion
Comment from catgirlseraid on 29 July 2026 at 01:53
One day one of those houses needed to access emergency services. They couldn’t make it there in time. But its ok because it stopped someones feeling of privacy being hurt.
There’s no pleasing everyone, and understanding some people may feel insecure about their privacy is part of the process. It’s important in cases like this to benefit the greater, wider range of people rather than certain individuals. Steps can be and are taken such as having no personal identifying information about people, limiting mapping of private features such as backyards etc to limit privacy invasion.
But that’s where the mapping stops, at publicly available verifiable information. There’s nothing being mapped in OpenStreetMap that should pose any real privacy risk to any individual. It is not up to a single person or group of people if their road should show on a map or not. This group could never encompass all possible users anyway.
Comment from Friendly_Ghost on 29 July 2026 at 06:52
If they don’t want their stuff to be mapped, they should put a camouflage net over it.
Comment from Aeiouau on 29 July 2026 at 11:17
Its an interesting question to pose, and i somewhat understand both sides in this case. Although in this day and age, you cannot realistically keep secret what is visible to the “eye in the sky” (satellites). Measuring what is better for the greater good of society seems adequate, as mapping places builds the foundation for very useful things such as emergency responses. If bad actors wish to gain knowledge through aerial imagery, then they can, regardless of if a place has been mapped in OSM.
Comment from LateNightTone on 6 August 2026 at 18:44
While I acknowledge there may be some nuance in this particular scenario (every place has its own customs and needs), the idea of “locals” holding that sort of sway over publicly available data is also very insular, very divisive, very “us vs them”. In my experience, that same attitude gets applied to new people that move to the area (and who would undoubtedly benefit from the ability to navigate around this new environment, and to learn about it).
The “locals” would prefer things to stay “local”, i.e. knowledge is only for those that already have it. In that direction lies not only a raft of other extremes of attitude, but also a sociological dead end.