New Strava API terms don't allow sharing activity data to other people

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Strava updated their API agreement and it doesn’t sound good.

The following quote from these new terms sounds like it’s a pretty big deal for CityStrides :frowning:

Third-party apps are no longer able to display your Strava activity data on their surfaces to other users.

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Yeah, I’ve already updated things so people’s Strava activities no longer appear on their profile page & the activity pages themselves are blocked as if they were private.
I have a little under a month to review the LifeMap situation, since it’s technically my own creation. The rest of the site is unaffected.

It does seem like a good opportunity to rework our profile pages.
I’ll be spending some time reworking them to push the activity list off to a separate tab for everyone. In its place, I’m thinking of something along the lines of combining the chart tab with the display format of the friend tab.
I’m thinking general stats that focus on street completions and overall progress at different levels (city/region/country), along with linked lists of specific recently completed streets. I’ll probably include the latest few activities (hidden from public for Strava) to retain the quick reference, and let people switch over to the activities tab for deep-dives on their history.

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Hopefully, it won’t affect the Lifemap data, as that is crucial to viewing other’s progress. It is cumulative, so makes sense to exclude it, as it respects their privacy concerns. Thank you James for being pro-active.

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@JamesChevalier

At this point in time, do you recommend those of us who can changing our sync from strava to another service?

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Dang, this is really unfortunate to hear for two reasons for my use case:

  • I frequently review the top striders for my city and look at their specific routes for places I am unsure about accessing, etc. It has been super helpful to see individual tracks.
  • I also give links to my own activities on CityStrides on my blog and elsewhere to show a specific activity route and stats. I used to link directly to the activity on Runkeeper, but they made it impossible for a logged out user to see anything, and they would need to be my friend when logged in. This is why I have been trying to switch to Strava, but have been stuck on getting all my 10+ years of history transferred.

Thank you for your hard work! I understand things will only get harder and probably worse in the name of privacy. :slight_smile:

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This seems terrible generally…I would actually prefer to connect through my Garmin but Strava is my source of truth. Would be quite painful to swap. Hopefully you dont run into problems!

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James: is there any downside to switching over to syncing from Garmin? Does that process risk messing up your data (assuming all of your data ultimately came in via Garmin->Strava->CityStrides)?

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Just reading a blog post on DC Rainmaker about how this ruins tons of other apps that use Strava API…and mentioning that they’re censoring their own forum from disputing their decision!

I feel at times that Strava wakes up each morning, heads to work, looks out over the San Francisco Bay from their offices, and asks itself: How can we anger our users and partners today? How can we make everyone’s life more difficult today?

A lot of other good insight in the post on how the changes are affecting other 3rd-party apps, and how obtuse the company is being about explaining their motivations. My guess is they want to make their (read: our) data proprietarily available to 3rd parties of their choosing.

Since I don’t upload with Strava it won’t affect me here beyond the broader changes James will make to accommodate this draconian change. I hope Runkeeper doesn’t follow suit for some suicidal reason :crossed_fingers:

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Wow, those API terms really make it seem like CityStrides will no longer be able to do anything at all with Strava data, since I have to imagine processing streets/completion percents/etc. would count as “analytics” referred to in:

“You may not process or disclose Strava Data, even publically viewable Strava Data, including in an aggregated or de-identified manner, for the purposes of, including but not limited to, analytics, analyses…

Man do I love corporations.

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Intrigue this morning in GMT! Strava has updated their statement overnight to The Verge and now says:

We wanted to provide some additional context around the changes to our API Agreement and the impact for our users and developers. We currently anticipate these changes will impact less than .1% of applications and proactively notified the majority of those affected last week.

So, congrats on being one of an elite few James? :sweat_smile: The rest of the updated statement doesn’t really change anything from the original, so just seems like PR CYA

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So … will we continue to be able to sync Strava activities to Citystrides, or do we need to sync from Garmin?

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Just want to highlight this portion of Strava’s statement to The Verge:

We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1%) of the applications on the Strava platform–the overwhelming majority of existing use cases are still allowed, including coaching platforms focused on providing feedback to users and tools that help users understand their data and performance.

Would CityStrides be a “[tool] that help users understand their data and performance?”