[joe_the_user]

Why would that be a problem?

Your location should not be an identifying value but more or less a topic.

Being able to set your parameters to some location somewhere and chat with "random people" there seems like a feature, not a bug.

[est]

> Why would that be a problem?

Hmm, the same reason you wanna keep your conversations private?

I can think of few cases, like if you want to giving nearby people coupons, I mean really nearby, not random guy on the other side of the planet trying to re-sell your coupons.

How to use a non-hackish, non-intrusive way to make content exclusive to local users?

Providing an ad-hoc wifi is not the solution because people may need public Internet activities and a device can connect only to one access point at a time.

[nl]

The edge cases just aren't worth doing any extra work for.

[est]

All innovations come from edge cases. Cheers :)

[DigitalTurk]

It's a problem because of spam.

On WeChat it happens that if you send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl', you get a link to some dodgy website back.

And before you call people who would send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl' naive. WeChat is in fact used a lot for hooking up with strangers.

[joe_the_user]

I don't get it.

I would expect people hooking up nearby would identify themselves a little specifically - I'd be "the guy in the tux with the red carnation". A spammer from across the globe isn't going identify themselves with a description fitting the woman in the table over. I mean, she would be "blue and white scarf" rather than "nearby pretty girl" (unless it's a spammer, yeah).

[DigitalTurk]

Well, 'nearby pretty girl' would not describer herself as such, but would have a plausible looking profile picture. :) Also the distances are a bit bigger than the bar you're sitting in (up to a few kilometers).