DC quickly updated his page with the article on it:
Strava’s Big Changes Aim To Kill Off Apps
However, ultimately, it doesn’t actually change things – in fact, kinda doubles down on it. In it, Strava basically says three things:
A) 3rd party apps can’t show data beyond the user itself. Just as before, this still breaks coaching apps. Strava tries to confuse people by saying “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.” – however, what they’re actually saying is 3rd party coaching apps can provide feedback, as long as that’s computational feedback. Coaching apps still cannot let human coaches see the data. Had that been the case, Strava would have simply said that, and notified coaching apps. They’ve done neither, and multiple coaching apps I’ve talked to have confirmed Strava hasn’t changed their position, but has scheduled meetings to talk about the impacts.
B) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is still prohibited. Again, Strava tries to keep distracting people by saying “training models” is not permitted. Yet the terms are very clear, both training and usage isn’t permitted. Still, as any company can tell you, even if it were just training (which again, it isn’t), these models can’t get better without training on the same data for whatever application purpose they are using. After all, last I checked, Strava themselves doesn’t give us permission to allow/deny their access to our data for AI training purposes.
C) “No impact to most developers” – In the update, they say “We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1%) of the applications on the Strava platform”. Except, that’s the most disingenuous way of writing it. Strava has tens of thousands of connected applications, the vast majority of which are tiny hobbyist applications that may have 1 user or a handful of users. Instead, it’s the big ticket applications that matter here with the most users. Strava isn’t say 0.1% of users, just 0.1% of applications.
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Ultimately, it seems like Strava’s API itself needs an update if Strava believes users need more control. And to be clear – I’m 100% behind giving users more control. Strava could easily add check-boxes for “AI data usage” and “Show data publically” to the 3rd party platform API authentication dialog (just like they do today for other features). They could easily require 3rd party developers to ensure consent (just like they do today for other features). And they could easily require developers to adhere to various rules (just like they do today).