We need an attribute in OpenStreetMaps for “Internet access for new phones only” (in effect) (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 days ago by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/osm@feddit.uk

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/28066807

Some cafes have the shitty practice of imposing a captive portal for Internet access. Sometimes they demand personal information, and sometimes the captive portal discriminates against people with older phones.

Currently these cafes have the field “Internet access: customers”. That’s misleading and unjustly described. Some of them should be tagged with “Internet access: only for customers with new phones”. It’s not really fair to say it’s for all customers when they use exclusive technology.

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[-] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

My phone is AOS 5. It auto-detects captive portals and auto launches the browser. From there, just like there are countless ways to fuck up a webpage, there are countless ways to fuckup a captive portal webpage.

Web developers are profoundly incompetent on a widespread scale. I think a lot of it is done by kids who just want to play with the latest HTML frills and latest JavaScript constructs. These are not well-trained professionals who understand the problem of rapidly changing “standards”. They are not taught about backwards and forwards compatibility, and that the latest language frills should be avoided (or guarded by conditionals based on user agent strings). These same undisciplined hackers are apparently writing captive portals.

this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025

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