I want simple geofencing

[WebWeWantBot]

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title: I want simple geofencing
date: 2024-01-21T11:18:26.109Z
submitter: Christoph Päper
number: 65acfd828d2cb60d6c35fa43
tags: [ ]
discussion: https://github.com/WebWeWant/webwewant.fyi/discussions/
status: [ discussing || in-progress || complete ]
related:

• title:
  url:
  type: [ article || explainer || draft || spec || note || discussion ]

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Some geofencing is about locking out users from particular geographic regions, e.g. where a streaming service has only limited redistribution rights. It’s in the provider’s legal or commercial interest to restrict or redirect access to their site. This is not in the best interest of users and therefore I don’t want to make it any easier. Let them keep using GeoIP which users then try to circumvent with VPNs.

Where geofencing is in the best interest of users, is online shopping for instance, because sellers may have different local sites with an optimized catalog (e.g. currency, taxes, local regulations, electric plugs, clothing sizes) or handling (payment, shipping). Visitors are therefore often asked whether they want to be redirected to a local shop, or if they have been redirected automatically already whether they want to keep that preselection. I wish there was a browser setting (similar to HTTP Accept-Language) for choosing a preferred location without exposing the actual geographic location of the host device as Geolocation API etc. do. Accordingly, the user would not need to give express permission to sites querying this info.

This should probably work with ISO 3166 codes. (They can be part of preferred language codes by BCP-47/ISO 639, but that’s a different use case really.) These are available for many continental regions (as three digits), for countries and their (administrative) subdivisions.

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If posted, this will appear at https://webwewant.fyi/wants/65acfd828d2cb60d6c35fa43/