HACKER Q&A
📣 binbag

Private, cross-platform location sharing


I’m looking for an alternative to Google Maps for real-time location sharing with friends and family. It needs to be cross platform so unfortunately can’t be Apple based. I’d rather not resort to Google Maps and the associated tracking. There are various options online from third parties, but I wondered if anyone had any recommendations for something that works, is trustworthy and secure, and relatively private. Thanks.


  👤 rektide Accepted Answer ✓
I put an activitypub fediverse project on hold a bit back, but would like to get back to it.

One of the various ActivityPub Vocabularies that one can post is an "Arrive" verb[1], as in, I arrived at this place. This would work well for a foursquare like check-in system. If you want something more real-time, you could either keep updating the location of that Arrive object, or just keep posting, every time you move more than 10m or whatever.

Sorry that I don't have anything helpful right now to offer! But I thought I'd share, as this is definitely part of the shared, open-standards based social systems that I hope we start to build, use, enjoy, & extend.

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-arrive


👤 alinhan