It's great to hear that you're exploring the ways maps can and have historically been misused in the interests of the powerful.

I'm a little concerned about the long-term strategy of governance over this information, especially since I'm reading Rebecca MacKinnon's book Consent of the Networked at the moment.

Have you considered how the governance and business structure of Hylo itself can affect this 'power of content moderation' (censorship) in future?

I think you're on the right track with a contextual, community-moderated or bioregional approach; but what if a powerful body (a state or a MNC, for instance) took the Hylo executives to court, demanding you release this information so they can surveill 'dissidents', who are statistically likely to be oppressed and marginalized groups? How do groups assert their sovereignty through this design?

It could come down to how the business constitution guides decision making and in a case like this I would hope that an assembly of users who represent land stewards and grassroots community organizers would be consulted as equal members, no matter who ends up in executive position of Hylo in future. I expect a cooperative structure is the best approach to ensure this, and that the database itself is then managed as a commons.

I'm glad that you're building on holochain, then there's a technical layer of protection; the data can be revealed through an agent-centric 'handshake' and not necessarily centralized in any one server. A mix of governance structure and technical capability holds hope of overcoming the avenues for exploitation that have been taken in the past. Keep up the awesome work!