cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1371422/mapquests-app-surges-to-no-1-in-navigation-after-refusing-to-rename-lake-ontario
Source: MapQuest on Bluesky
MapQuest also released an online tool that lets you jokingly rename Lake Ontario to whatever you want it to be, then share the results on social media.
Don’t fall for the marketing. MapQuest uses Open Street Maps data and slaps ads or a paid subscription on top of it. They aren’t ALLOWED to change it, because it is not their data,it is a community project. There are plenty of FOSS clients for OSM, most notably CoMaps.
That being said, I’ve also found OSM to be unusably bad in my area so whatever.
OSM pulls from a few different sources, but for exact details it’s the community that enters the data. Can’t find an address or business? Add it and then it’ll be there for everyone.
Exactly. Just add what’s missing yourself. It’s kinda fun to edit the map of your local area and its super helpful for others.
Okay but I don’t need a map for places I know well enough to edit and I don’t really find myself randomly looking at maps of areas I know well
You can let the whole world know that it is 3.2 miles to boonhet’s house. Party time! /s
No idea who went and downvoted me for a fact that applies to probably 99% of the world’s population. Anyway, I did go and add several missing local businesses, removed defunct ones and relocated some government services that were showing locations they hadn’t been at for like 20 years. But my point stands, unless you go out of your way like I just did, you usually don’t naturally find yourself looking at OSM for the places you’re most qualified to update.