Protection against abusive activity flagging

[ryboy]

Would it be possible to create a protection against abusive activity flagging? Some people do not hesitate to flag and report the legit activities of others when their KOM is beaten.

To prevent this form of cheating, I propose several measures. It should not be possible for a user to report an activity if:

- For cycling activities, if the activity was recorded with a GPS unit (like a Garmin or Wahoo for example, which are more reliable than recording via the Strava app) AND sensors such as: a power meter, cadence and heart rate, since these sensors can guarantee the authenticity of the activity

- If these activities have been performed by professional athletes on Strava

- It should not be possible for a user to report the same activity more than once

Thank you in advance.

[anchskier]

I agree that there should be some control in place to limit abusive flagging, but some of what you listed would not work.  The presence of a power meter, cadence, or heart rate do not mean that the ride is a legit bike ride.  People riding e-bikes can have all of those and the values could be similar to people riding analog bikes depending on the biometrics of the individual person.  Just having those devices does not rule out cheating, so there still needs to be the option to flag those activities if we have some reason to know they are not correct.  Professional athletes are not immune to incorrect file uploads.  I've seen them do the same thing that us "regular" people have done including posting a ride as a run and leaving it running while on a drive home after a ride.  It happens to everyone.  

[JBW-Florida]

To the best of my knowledge, some of your ideas are already functional. I've only had one KOM ride flagged, and when I opened a helpdesk ticket to get that flag resolved, the help operator wrote this is his reply: "I've removed the flag from your activity, and it can't be re-flagged by another user."
This sort of indicates that once the helpdesk looks at the activity and wipes the flag, the activity is protected from this type of thing again. If you think there's just one individual who's flagging you for kicks, then you need to open a help ticket for that issue.

JBW-Florida (he/him)
STRAVA | User Community

[Jane]

Hello and thanks so much for your post.

We have mechanisms in place to address your concern. Please review this information on How to Resolve an Activity flag

Additionally, if you've removed the flag and it is re-flagged, and you believe the activity is flagged in error, you can submit a ticket to Strava Support. A Support Analyst will be happy to take a look and address the situation.