OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an open, community-driven map database powering countless apps and services and used by organizations including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Mapbox, and Wikimedia. In short, it is foundational infrastructure for the web. For regions with active communities (particularly in Europe), OSM is often noted for the superiority of its data on features such as cycling routes, hiking trails, and footpaths.
The Wikipedia article for OpenStreetMap documents several instances of data vandalism, which OSM is vulnerable to as a crowdsourced project. Three incidents stood out:
- In 2012, Google fired two “rogue contractors” for vandalizing the OSM database, intentionally adding false data such as reversing the direction of one-way streets.
- In 2018, a vandal made several viciously antisemitic edits to place names around New York City. While quickly reverted at the source, these changes nonetheless propagated into downstream applications pulling data from MapBox, such as Zillow, Snapchat, Citibike, and Wikipedia.
- Users of the mobile game Pokémon GO regularly vandalize the OSM database underlying the game to gain a gameplay advantage, although the authors of the research article on this subject note this vandalism tends to be transitory rather than sustained.
Side note: I was amused to note how strong Google’s regional results bias is for “OSM”—the entire first page is taken up by results related to the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.