A mountain biker discovers a new trail. He shares it, with good intentions: “Great flow, cool jumps.” The app tracks its popularity and recommends it to others. What happens next is beyond his control.

The app that opens—and closes—trails

Komoot has made an important contribution: The app made it easier for many people to access trails that were previously hard to reach. Without a club membership or local network, they could explore new routes. Before being acquired by Bending Spoons, Komoot worked closely with conservation organizations. Local rangers and national park officials were trained in digital visitor management to protect sensitive areas. But the algorithm itself lacks this awareness. 

Here’s how the mechanism works: A rider records a ride, and the GPS track ends up on the platform’s servers. The more users record the same route, the higher the system ranks it and recommends it to a growing audience. For the algorithm, there is no difference between a signposted bike park trail and a path that three locals have been riding for twenty years. Both appear as lines on the Map and are recommended. The same principle applies to Strava segments, Trailforks highlights, and Garmin heatmaps. None of these platforms distinguishes on its own between a legally established trail and a tolerated path.&

Liability Risks from Popular Trails

A trail that a handful of locals have used discreetly for years becomes the most recommended route in a region within a single season. Erosion gullies form, tree roots are exposed, and wildlife retreats. The forest owner, who has silently tolerated this for years, suddenly faces a problem he can no longer ignore. Not out of hostility toward cycling, but because liability law compels him to act. In Germany, a forest owner is liable as soon as he becomes aware of artificial trail features—such as jumps, banked turns, and drops—on his property and tolerates them. In the event of an accident, this can threaten their livelihood. 

A ruling by the Hamm Higher Regional Court from February 2026 shows just how far this liability extends even for legal trails: A club was ordered to pay 50 percent of the damages because the route on an officially approved, regularly inspected flow trail was deemed inadequate. For an informal, never-approved trail that is suddenly recommended daily, the liability risk is simply incalculable. 

In Austria, mountain biking in the forest is generally prohibited without express written permission. In Switzerland, the cantons decide individually: Graubünden is generally tolerant, while other cantons are hardly so. Shouldn’t this be visible in the apps? Theoretically, yes. Komoot and other platforms read access tags from OpenStreetMap. If a path is marked as closed there, the algorithm generally does not route over it. The problem: Komoot treats paths without explicit access information as passable by default. No tag means: permitted. Tolerated trails usually have no legal status in OpenStreetMap; they appear as physically existing paths, with no indication of tolerance, prohibition, or a gray area. The algorithm sees a line that many mountain bikers have ridden and recommends it to others. It doesn’t ask whether this is legally permissible because this information is simply not available in the data. 

Human Judgment vs. Algorithm

In March 2025, Bending Spoons acquired Komoot for approximately 300 million euros. Within two weeks, the new owner laid off around 80 to 85 percent of the 150 employees, including all those who maintained partnerships with nature parks, manually moderated sensitive regions, and were available to address conflicts. Bending Spoons is known for this pattern: buy, lay off, automate. The same thing happened at Evernote and WeTransfer. At Komoot, it’s hitting exactly those employees who maintained partnerships with conservation organizations, knew the forest service offices, and were still available to address conflicts. 

Trailforks goes further than Komoot: Local admins can completely hide trails, remove GPS data from public heatmaps, and activate warning systems that flag re-uploads on blocked corridors. Anyone who submits a hidden trail anyway receives a red warning. The trail does not go online without moderator approval. But even this system has its limits. It only works where local admins are active and have entered the trails into the database in advance. Regions without an admin structure remain unprotected. And Trailforks cannot remove what is already visible on Strava or Komoot. The platforms are independent of one another. A closed trail on Trailforks remains visible on Strava. 

Now it’s up to the community

Tacit tolerance works as long as it remains silent. A forest owner sees the tracks; he says nothing as long as there are five mountain bikers. Not fifty. Komoot doesn’t know that. Neither does Trailforks. They see a trail that works and send more people there. 

What a single person at Komoot used to be able to catch, the community must now take on itself. Anyone who knows a trail that relies on such trust keeps it offline. Anyone riding in a region with an active Trailforks community reports sensitive trails to the local admin. Anyone mapping in OpenStreetMap marks tolerated trails as informal so that routing systems don’t automatically recommend them. Trails that no one officially maintains survive only as long as no one finds them. What the community doesn’t protect, no algorithm will.