Live position sharing

[emersion]

Sharing the current fixed location without live updates can be done with a PRIVMSG with a geo:// URI. However, sharing live position updates will require a more sophisticated solution.

The simplest solution would probably be something like a TAGMSG with a client tag (akin to the existing typing indicator spec).

[nektro]

maybe a "start geo share" + "end geo share" messages that append the info into PING ?

[delthas]

The simplest solution would probably be something like a TAGMSG with a client tag (akin to the existing typing indicator spec).

Yes, regularly sending eg @+location=geo://... TAGMSG user

[KoraggKnightWolf]

I barely even have words to describe this idea, and regardless of the general perception of acidvegas, I have to agree with him on this.... This has got to be the most obnoxious (not to mention, privacy-violating) extension IRCv3 has come up with so far. Unless I am misunderstanding how the geo:// protocol works (which is possible of course), this would give away the exact location of a person, as in, not just their rough location/city. If it indeed gives away the exact location/address (like the house they live in) then I would be genuinely shocked if I need to explain to ANYONE why that is a horrible idea... Even if it is has the accuracy of an IP address (so roughly the city) this is still privacy violating enough, and cloaking was established on most IRCd's and modern networks to combat such issues (amongst making it more effort than to just /whois nick and ddos them, but /whois nick and then looking up the IP on networks without cloaking poses the same risk). If it uses the location of e.g. the VPS/VPN/Bouncer/etc of the user, then the information is not useful in the (seemingly?) intenteded form, as it would give away the address of whatever machine they are using, instead of their actual location (which, unless I am mistkaen, is what this is supposed to achieve?). If my understanding of the geo:// protocol as outlined above is incorrect, and/or my definition of "(live) position sharing" is incorrect, please feel free to point out how it actually operates, as I am most likely not the only person heavily confused/concerned by it. IF my understanding however is correct, I cannot imagine a situation where sharing your exact location in the world is something someone on IRC of all platforms genuinely desires... I would like to apologize if this post seems a bit trollish, it is simply because this extension seems rather harmful than useful to me.

[delthas]

please feel free to point out how it actually operates

You open your IRC app and open a private message tab with your friend. You press "share my location", select a duration, like "15 minutes". Then for 15 minutes your app sends its location to your friend by message over IRC. Just like WhatsApp.

[KoraggKnightWolf]

I do not share my location on any applications, though even then it sounds a bit risky, as it can always happen that a friend is not a genuine friend, or being impersonated etc. The implementation would ideally only allow this in queries then, to not accidentally leak one's location to an entire channel. The repeated "every X minutes" could allow tracking a person's behavior like where they go shopping, their route to work etc which again could be abused by someone just pretending to be their friend, impersonating their friend etc. Additionally, and this one is truly just an assumption, but is it not such that most IRC interactions occur mostly between people who do not know each other in real life? If the people I talk to are not in the same country, but usually as with IRC, all around the world, and assuming they are genuine, how would this information help them? the account tag, bot tag etc, many tags can be useful, e.g. for coding bots, though this only really helps if the people are somewhat close in real life, or is there an oversight on my end?

[tommyrot]

Depends on #112

[nektro]

yall need to really take a step back and breathe. none of this is privacy violating if a user voluntarily decides to share their location with a trusted recipient(s). not only would this be an optional extension/capability if it ever actualized for both servers and clients but even if you're client/server of choice implemented this, you would be under no obligation to use it. this org is about the protocol, not necessarily just the use cases we use irc for today.

[DarthGandalf]

You know that nothing stops you already from saying in IRC (channel or query) a message like "hey mate, I am at 0°1' lat, 2°3' lon", right? This proposal just allows clients to show nicer GUI for this, nothing more.

[KoraggKnightWolf]

It is true that nothing stops the user from sharing their location by typing it out, but accidentally pressing a button of sharing location, and then quickly just pressing "accept" to make it go away again are very likely to happen, as people accidentally press the wrong buttons often. the idea also mentioned nowhere that it is for trusted recipient(s) only, if it had mentioned that this is for queries only, that would be acceptable. there is indeed no obligation to use it, though for that case "humans press the wrong button by accident more often than they should" sadly still stands, and sometimes users do need to be protected from themselves.

[nektro]

had to look this up myself, but the geo url is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme for anyone uninitiated

[slingamn]

IMO, since this can be implemented as a client-to-client extension that doesn't require server cooperation, it also doesn't require the normal consensus-seeking process. I think the best path forward would be to spec and build this as a vendor extension, before (or instead of?) advancing it as an IRCv3 extension.

[GIJack]

Also in spec should be an option for location disabled by settings, to refuse an answer.

but I think this should be added to the ctcp spec

as in ctcp geo

[ValwareIRC]

my use-case for this is letting people share any location they want, so if I want to show someone where I went on holiday, I can share the location which can defer to some map app or something deals with the geo:// protocol. this isn't "live" location sharing but this is my use-case for sharing a location.