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Google Maps Reviews in Germany are utterly pointless (europe.pub)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/germany@feddit.org
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50778217

πŸ—ΊοΈ While visiting Pride Berlin, I learned how utterly pointless Google Maps Reviews in Germany are.

⭐ Any place can simply report negative reviews for defamation or claim the person was never there and have it removed.

Users can then appeal & risk a lawsuit.

When a review is removed the removed count on Google Maps goes up (πŸ–ΌοΈ 1)

However that count is reset after 365 days and also only goes to 250! (πŸ–ΌοΈ 2)

Therefore companies can simply mass report negative reviews to improve their rating.

https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/16997273

So many vulnerable people are relying on Google Maps reviews & ratings to tell them where it is save to go.

Some places have only 1000-2000 reviews but >250 reviews removed in the past 365 days!

Like how bad must the situation there be?!

Absolute shame.

Screenshot of a business on Google Maps with "Over 250 reviews removed due to defamation complaints." in the past past 365 days.
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[–] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

We're getting there. Kinda.

It seems to be a matter of days before CoMaps adds support for displaying user reviews in their Android app, as the first user-oriented open source map app to do so. I'm pretty excited about that. The code just needs to be reviewed at this point.

The reviews will be sourced from Mangrove.reviews, who have been in the business of open data reviews for a while. It seems like a decent project, run by @mangroveReviews@mas.to, though their current website is very difficult to use. I don't really know how moderation works on the platform so I can't really claim to understand it, but it seems to be a pretty flexible standard for reviews attempting to be a bit of a one size fits all solution.

Currently the best way to write reviews to mangrove.reviews is using an app called MapComplete. It takes effort.

An alternative open review platform based on ATproto is cartes.app, but I don't think it's used by any map apps yet. The project website is however much more usable than Mangrove.

My personal preference would be for a federated review service using ActivityPub, but that's just a dream I'm having.

For now, keep an eye on @CoMaps@floss.social. Hopefully them implementing Mangrove support will motivate people to start writing reviews there.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    @cabbage @madeindex @CoMaps Integration with ActivityPub is definitely on the cards: https://gitlab.com/open-reviews/mangrove/-/work/_items/45 . If you have any input on the mechanism make sure to drop a comment!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

    I have seen this gitlab issue before, and I'm very happy you are committed to it!

    As I have not yet managed to get a good grasp of how Mangrove works, I haven't been fully able to wrap my head around what ActivityPub integration would mean for the platform, and how the two standards could potentially coexist in a fruitful way.

    My biggest worry about Mangrove is moderation. It seems to me the job of identifying bad content currently falls squarely on Mangrove centrally, and that it a) presumes a "one size fits all" approach to moderation, and b) assumes it is up for the task at a scale. If Mangrove becomes huge the incentive and potential for abuse will both be huge, posing a gigantic moderation challenge. Unlike the Fediverse there does not seem to be an obvious solution for moderation on scale in place - attracting more reviewers would not automatically attract more or better moderators. Mangrove also seems very vulnerable to LLM spam which can be difficult to spot, but that the fediverse so far has been relatively good at avoiding.

    Well-moderated fediverse instances seem to be uniquely good at keeping things human and blocking trolls, and we can choose instances with moderation criteria (and federation criteria) that fit our preferences. In effect my Mastodon account feels a bit like a protected bubble, showing me the parts of the Internet that I actually want to interact with. If I could choose to only see reviews by users not blocked by my instance that would be incredible.

    I realize there are a bunch of challenges to this approach. Software displaying reviews would have to somehow connect to a federated instance to choose their moderation policy. All users would have to be federated, and if it falls behind on moderation the @mangrove.reviews instance itself might be defederated by other instances. And of course it could make the platform less open to non-federated users, which is obviously most of the internet.

    Of course there are already a few review platforms on the Fediverse - Bookwyrm and NeoDB - but there's not yet any option to review locations. Still, any federated review platform should probably strive to be as close to those as possible on the technical level.

    I'm sorry that this is very long and winding without any real point! I'm sure you've been thinking about these things as well.

    And thank you so much for paving the way for all of this - I can't wait to start seeing Mangrove reviews appearing in Comaps! @mangroveReviews@mas.to

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    @cabbage These are some good points, Fediverse is definitely getting something right here. The primary value of Mangrove is the standard for reviews and their signing. Reviews could be easily synced between servers thanks to the decentralised identity scheme, so the current server is hopefully just the first one of many in the future. The policy of the current server is to attempt the computation of reliability in an automated way, but any application or server of Mangrove reviews can implement a manual white or blacklist too.

    Would be great to get someone more familiar with ActivityPub to consider the best path here.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    It seems @PrivateCoffee@cuddly.space are behind the development of FediLoc, which if I understand correctly is aiming to bring place reviews to ActivityPub. Maybe it would be interesting to have them in the conversation if you haven't talked yet.

    With Mangrove reviews hitting CoMaps in a couple of weeks it absolutely seems like everyone would benefit from supporting that standard in some way rather than creating competing decentralized services. @mangroveReviews@mas.to

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    @cabbage hi, thanks for the ping!

    The general idea behind FediLoc was to provide a first implementation of federated location based information on POIs, in the hope that OSM apps will integrate this functionality as well. We wanted to help solving the henn egg problem with data for such an integration. We do not want to add yet another standard (https://xkcd.com/927/), so happy to connect!

    Post by @NE555

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    This sounds really great! I think it's clear that ActivityPub needs to expand into location based information at some point. I also don't see why reviews and discussions of places shouldn't be part of the social web.

    As far as I understand what @mangrovereviews@mas.to offers is a very flexible protocol for reviews. I'm not sure if it would be best to integrate it with ActivityPub somehow, or if it makes more sense to add it as an additional protocol to platforms for which it's relevant. The easiest solution I could see would be Fediloc only performing two-way federation through ActivityPub, but broadcasting reviews outwards through the Mangrove standard to maximise their reach. That way reviews will become integrated into services supporting Mangrove, while keeping the benefits of ActivityPub within Fediloc.

    Comaps will support Mangrove reviews on Android very soon, and it is already supported in their (more experimental) desktop app. It might also be added to OsmAnd if the team merges the pull request. So it seems the hurdle of making it into map apps has largely been overcome by Mangrove, while the social media aspect of it still needs work. In either case supporting Mangrove at this point is probably necessary to avoid XKCD 927.

    I feel a bit awkward coming in from the sidelines as I don't have anything to contribute, but with Mangrove gaining traction I at least know there's a growing demand for a user friendly platform for generating place reviews with it. I don't know how much time and resources you have to dedicate to Fediloc, but it looks really interesting at least. I know I'd use it. :) @privatecoffee@cuddly.space

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