Think of Strava as turning any form of outdoor exercise into a multiplayer game.
The whole concept is basically that each training session (for me, cycling, running) ends up as an automatic (editable) diary post with all your stats from the session, a nice map of where you went and what contested “segments” you traversed. You can then compare what you did to how well you did five years ago or how your buddy from the cycling club did.
From a privacy perspective Strava is egregious (plenty of people have been killed based on the data users make PUBLIC). And for things like daily walks it makes zero sense (IMO).
I can’t understand how people would be… that careless and be willing to publicly share such a risky type of data, though. Well, exactly like you mentioned: we know some weirdos could easily abuse that kind of information to harm those users.
Since I’m one of them, I think the appeal is that it’s sort of another dimension to training/doing sports. Going out on a 3 hour bicycle ride becomes a little less solipsistic, if that makes sense. You feel sorta included in the local scene for that sport and you get to see how many else likes to do the same thing. And how you compare.
Think of Strava as turning any form of outdoor exercise into a multiplayer game.
The whole concept is basically that each training session (for me, cycling, running) ends up as an automatic (editable) diary post with all your stats from the session, a nice map of where you went and what contested “segments” you traversed. You can then compare what you did to how well you did five years ago or how your buddy from the cycling club did.
From a privacy perspective Strava is egregious (plenty of people have been killed based on the data users make PUBLIC). And for things like daily walks it makes zero sense (IMO).
Thx a lot for the detailed explanation.
I can’t understand how people would be… that careless and be willing to publicly share such a risky type of data, though. Well, exactly like you mentioned: we know some weirdos could easily abuse that kind of information to harm those users.
Since I’m one of them, I think the appeal is that it’s sort of another dimension to training/doing sports. Going out on a 3 hour bicycle ride becomes a little less solipsistic, if that makes sense. You feel sorta included in the local scene for that sport and you get to see how many else likes to do the same thing. And how you compare.