[tivert]

> It actually helps people. The only negative thing here is that Google makes money from it.

I used to be that naive, then I tried to correct a Places issue on Facebook. I stumbled into this netherworld of similar people being abused with horrible tools continually banging their heads against a wall "to help people," with little or no support from Facebook.

After months of trying, I totally failed at my task, and I vowed never again. These company just abusively exploit people's need to help others for their own profit. If Google/Facebook/etc. wants me to work for them, they can pay me and give me reasonable tools.

[executesorder66]

Add the info to OpenStreetMaps instead.

[tivert]

> Add the info to OpenStreetMaps instead.

OpenStreetMap didn't have the same error (which was still on Facebook, last I checked). Facebook Places has a buggy duplicate detection system that would frequently merge different places together, including one I specifically cared about. It would suck in any new instances into its merged blackhole. IIRC, a huge portion of the activity in that "netherworld" Facebook group I found was trying to mass-report merge errors to the automated system, which frequently didn't work.

However, OpenStreetMap would have been a very good suggestion for some of the other "netherworld" Facebook group members. Many of them seemed care about making Facebook Places accurate in general, so they'd look for and fix errors far afield from the stuff they actually interacted with.

[executesorder66]

Yeah I was just commenting in general towards the attitude of wanting to help people. It's wonderful when people have good intentions like that. But people should direct those good intentions on improving open data sets instead of being slave labour for large corporations.