Recently, I emailed Uber (OSM@uber.com) to ask for clarification regarding this matter. Here is their reply.
Hi,
Thank you for reaching out and for offering Uber the opportunity to respond before publication. We appreciate WeeklyOSM’s commitment to balanced reporting and welcome the chance to provide context.
We want to be transparent: we acknowledge that there were genuine shortcomings in how we managed our organised editing activities in London, and we are actively working to address them. Below is an accurate account of the situation.
What happened: Our editing team (apgosm) conducted sidewalk and road network mapping edits in the UK using aerial imagery as the primary evidence source. We subsequently learned — through community feedback — that several of those areas already had accurate, recently ground-truth-verified data contributed by local community members. Our edits inadvertently introduced regressions in those areas, and we take full responsibility.
On community responsiveness: A contributing factor to the delayed responses was an internal communication gap—not all active Uber OSM editors were subscribed to our shared distribution list, which meant OSM community notification emails went unnoticed by the relevant editors. This was not intentional disregard for the community, and we have since taken steps to ensure all editors are properly set up to receive and act on community feedback.
Actions already taken:
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We contacted the OSM Data Working Group directly on April 22nd to acknowledge the issues, explain our methodology, and commit to compliance with the Organised Editing Guidelines.
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We are actively engaging with DWG’s latest guidance to create specific, region-level activity pages (starting with London) on the OSM wiki, including defined scope, start/end dates, links to local community discussions, and documentation of any objections raised — as required by the guidelines.
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We have paused all organised editing in the affected areas until the proper documentation is in place and local community discussions have run their course.
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We have established an internal review process pre-editing to assess existing data quality, source recency, and recent community contributions before making changes. We have also implemented additional validations to ensure we exclude already existing well-mapped areas based on recency and avoid any overriding or duplication.
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We have committed to responding to all changeset comments and community messages within 3 business days going forward.
We recognise the importance of high quality map data for the OSM community and partners consuming this map data, and well-documented map editing can be a meaningful contribution to OSM not only in London but also in other areas where Uber operates. We are committed to rebuilding trust with the community through our actions, not just our words.
If you require any further information or clarification before publication, please do not hesitate to reach out. We are happy to help ensure the reporting is accurate and fair.
Thank you again for your consideration.
Regards,