[OSM-talk] Facebook mapping highways using AI in collaboration with OpenStreetMap

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 26 July 2019, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> This is probably normal for corporate PR people, but for me it's just
> disgusting.

And in that conflict in my eyes you can see the core of the problem.  
The corporate appropriation of OpenStreetMap and the OSM community has 
meanwhile all the characteristics of a cult.  You can see in the 
reactions of corporate representatives here - as well as in other cases 
where corporate PR misrepresenting OSM is presented, see for example 
the comments to the Facebook diary entry that has been linked to or in 
the discussion with the Thailand community, that many of them are so 
detached from the reality of the hobby mapper community and 
non-corporate data users that functional communication is essentially 
not possible any more.

I have no solution for this - at least none that works within OSM alone.  
But i have strong doubts meanwhile that arguing with people who are 
fully immersed into the belief system of corporate PR regarding OSM is 
of benefit in most cases.  This in itself is a pretty frightening 
realization.

There is a famous saying (not sure of its origin) - that fits pretty 
well here:  It is hard to make people understand something if their 
livelihood depends on not understanding it.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/