this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Privacy
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I am pretty over these videos of people whining about the amount of data big tech collects while refusing to move to alternatives because "muh convenience".
For those unaware, Organic Maps (uses OSM) is really good! It's good for 90% of all ur navigation needs. For the rest 10%, there's no good alternative to google maps unfortunately.
Some further clarification on the closed source thing from their FAQ:
Like there's no open source project with commercial paid licence ?
Nothing competes with osmand for hiking or cycling.
Traffic updates aren't exactly a problem for me as I travel everywhere using my bicycle/public transit.
The only problem I face is that I can't get public transit information on OSM. Now ideally the city should be the one making this information accessible. Unfortunately for me, I currently live in a shitty city (although not for long). Therefore, within a matter of months, Organic would meet almost 100% of my navigation needs.
pretty sure organic is working on that, I remember there being docs on building with PT data.
My issue with these is that my use case is public transport, for that it seems like GMaps is still unbeatable, i hope to find an alternative as good or better based on OSM soon because it's the one tool i still have no alternative to
Where are you from? Where I live (in the Netherlands) there's an official tool from the public transport services which works just as well as gmaps to plan your train/tram/metro/bus journey.
Same same. This is a problem in shithole cities. Good cities have their own transit apps (which are like Uber for public transit).
Out of curiosity, any examples? I know for NYC people use Citymapper, but that's available for most big cities.
Calgary, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, etc.
If you're American, some of them support transit now. I have Magic Earth and it supports it in most major metro areas (and even my dinky little city I believe lol)
I think 5 out of that 10% is supplemented by OsmAnd. But it does not have public transport schedules and traffic data.
There are often individual apps for various cities and transport organizations.
Traffic has always been a mixed bag. Yeah it's nice to be able to see that street A is more busy than street B. But so can everybody else, and they're all going to use street B now.
Meh, I find most people don't even bother.
I use secondary routes 90% of the time by default, because they're just as fast with less mental effort and less risk.
Why go with all the lemmings?
In my experience that's not how it works out. It's about balancing the load, while making the driver take the least amount of detour needed.
Street B only has to handle the remaining traffic, and street A has a chance to unclog or at least be a faster route as some of its traffic does not exist anymore.
The app doesn't control what people do, it just makes recommendations based on busy segments, based on data which is already obsolete by the time it's being used. Ultimately the lemmings will do whatever their lemming brain tells them to.
(That is, assuming the app doesn't actually try to spread people around the various routes. But I doubt that any app maker wants to assume responsibility for that.)
Ultimately traffic apps are mostly useless. You can't "solve" traffic congestion with apps any more than you can make water flow faster through a pipe. Congestion is constrained by available road space and choke points. Google Maps is mostly an excuse for Google to collect location data, with a thin layer of features on top to make it seem worthwhile.
Wow, organic maps is really nice, seems like a much cleaner user interface than OsmAnd, whereas OsmAnd has more options.
What are the rest 10%?
Reviews most definitely. Hard to beat that
I'm glad I came back to this thread. Would never have heard of this!
Can you search for street addresses?
I genuinely don't understand how anyone can believe this, I keep trying it over and over and over and it fails on the absolute most basic of business searches. And some of the directions it gives are just completely nonsensical, and it's voice guidance is absolutely terrible making it fairly easy to miss a Direction if you're not able to be looking at the screen
I hate giving my location to Google but at the end of the day they are still the only GPS navigation that doesn't suck at basic navigation
Yes, it does. I have used it successfully for months. My main issue is I need traffic data due to a new job and figuring which route to take. AFAIK, no other nav app has traffic data. That's the only real bummer.
HERE WeGo has traffic data but of course, as in Google Maps, it sources from other users of the same app.
If not many people use HERE, then the data is also not reliable.
also a lot of open maps alternatives rely on YOUR contribution to be good instead of a hired team at some corpo.
use it and help out with it and you will have your open mapping app!
Well change can only be done through voicing disapproval first, although Google will most definitely won't stop the data gathering in Maps.
Well It's understandable if a lot of people wouldn't switch over to OSM-based apps. I've tried OSMAnd, and I observe 3 drawbacks. Lengthy public transport calculation (fair since it's computing on the phone), no reviews in POI areas (really hard to catch up on), weird results in transportations
Yes, but if you as the consumer never actually stop giving the company your money and/or data then there is little incentive for them to change. Just complaining by itself does absolutely nothing to a company the size of Google. You need to actually follow it up by using your limited power as a consumer to support an alternative. Only then, and if enough people do the same, will the first company consider making changes. If they don't, at least you are supporting an alternative project and helping it to improve so that it may one day feel like less of compromise.
Absolutely agreed.
Most people (public and private) never go beyond disapproval, though.
You'll hear people complain about this and that, but never even looking for an alternative.
I always try to keep in mind there are a lot of people that are simply unable to transition to alternative apps because they lack knowledge and time to do research on such things. What we see through videos isn't the majority of the people, it is people that make content for the majority.
People have hard times getting into more technical stuff already. Expecting people that are struggling to survive in capitalism to spend their free time learning about underground alternatives or to turn into sys admins and host their own stuff is out of touch if reality in my opinion.
Edit: just wanted to add, I wouldn't say the problem is on the people, but on big tech that predates on them
Which GoogleMaps alternative has user reviews? I downloaded organic maps suggested here and there are no reviews. When I'm in a new town I need to know where I can and where I shouldn't eat, shop or stay. At least there are some icons on organic maps, but that's it.
The "user" reviews on Google Maps (and similar platforms like Yelp) can be fake. Go to the Fake Review Watch channel on YouTube or visit their website if you want to see real examples of this. This is a service that businesses of all sizes, all over the world are paying for - sometimes on a massive scale.
However if you still really want to rely on Google reviews, use GMaps WV.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
YouTube
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The problem for me is when someone sends me a location pin it is almost always a Google map link. I have the same issue with people in my community using whatsapp.
Can't you just open that in a web browser? Take the address, put it in an alternative map app. Problem solved.
I guess you are right, for me I just try to avoid all Google links and products in the first place. I understand that you can tweak privacy controls and settings that allow you to manage how your data with Google is collected, I could also use a privacy browser or incognito, but my main issue is not giving any of these juggernaut corporations a chance to swing and cash in on my personal data.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Is your problem that you feel forced to use Google Maps? Or that you feel forced to ignore your friends because they use Google Maps? I assumed the former with my initial reply, but now it sounds like your have the latter problem.
I'm not ignoring my friends; I'm just pointing out that due to the convenience of these apps, the people around me use them without seeming to care about their privacy implications.