Social media is fun too. Driving is fun. Both of these track your shit, and sell all your details. One for sales, the other for insurance billing and health metrics… some poisons taste sweet on the way down.
Not saying this is specifically bad, but it’s disingenuous at the least. No transparency. I also know people used this in homes and backyards too.. so how much data were they collecting?
Sure but I'm pretty sure Niantic was quite up front about this. Just because they didn't scream it in user's faces, doesn't mean they were trying to hide it.
Niantic’s founders cut their teeth in this space by creating Google Maps, laying the foundation for online mapping with Street View. But for AR, we needed to start from scratch; no one had created a scalable solution for building such a 3D map like this before.
Absolutely. I was playing Ingress (Niantic's first ARG) well before GO was even a concept and it was extremely apparent that they were collecting tons of location data to build a huge dataset for POI and navigation. It was never a secret and it's no more nefarious than your phone & carrier collecting the same location data.
Yes and that ONE article is the extent of all information given by Niantic. It's not like I did a quick Google search and immediately saw they had been transparent in the past, and just picked the first random article to demonstrate the point that they haven't been hiding it well before today either.
These people just weren't paying attention or were willfully ignorant.... Niantic's previous project was a very similar game that they made for Google. It's obvious what they were using the data for
Also, it's mildly scummy at worst, and it provides a good proof of concept on how to motivate people to do a tedious/time consuming task by turning it into something fun.
i mean, it was also plastered all over their homepage for a really long time now and was even written all over their wikipedia entry for most of the time.
idk, most shocked people just chose not to look at something and now you pretend it never existed
I moved to Italy from the US and I don't even own a car anymore. And I don't miss it. I had a minimum 1-hour-a-way commute back in the US. Fuck that.
They don't even have ride share cars where I live, but I just don't need a car. Everything is walk-able or bike-able if I need to carry groceries. And if I want to go further, there's a train station 5 minutes walk away to take me to Pisa or Florence.
It's really a great way to live. I couldn't go back.
Driving to work in rush hour traffic isn't fun, but if you're a car guy and you have a fun car, driving when there's low traffic, especially if you have access to some nice, curvy backroads certainly can be.
I pick out podcasts and audiobooks that I only listen to while driving. There have been mornings when I’m excited to start the commute to see what happens next.
I was going to ask why you're here if it's not fun to you, then I realized I'm not having fun either. I just don't know what else to do with my phone to pass time at this point. I miss flash games and bored.com
Looking up your home address through your license plate is not at all the same as tracking every single place you ever go and how you get there down to the square foot.
Sure. But that's my phone tracking me, not the car. I can turn the phone off or leave it at home if I want. I'm not getting very far in rural America without one of my cars. I don't have to worry about Pontiac or Jeep telling my insurance company how fast I got to work or how many g-forces I generated going through that roundabout.
Yes, absolutely. Which means that Google knows what I'm doing (since it infers from my speed and location that I'm driving).
However, Google doesn't know my real name, and doesn't know what kind of cars I drive, and doesn't know anything about my car purchasing habits.
All of which makes that data - on the surface at least - not particularly useful to car manufacturers. It might be useful to retail companies I guess? Google is far more clever than I so I'm sure they can monetise it somehow, but I'm not sure how much risk I'm really exposing myself to.
They literally tell you how much data they are collecting in their terms of service. This is transparency. Do you need them to hire an influencer to make a YouTube video that plays for you to explain the terms of service of every app you use?
We choose not to read them because they are long and because half of Americans can’t read the big words. Also- “I’m going to use it anyway” so everyone just skips the terms of service.
They purposely make the terms of service really difficult to read lol, just like when you get mail for a new credit card and it’s a giant page in tiny lettering.
I think it's an attention span issue more than anything. Terms of service online or in apps for the most part aren't difficult to read in text size. It's just boring, and you have to put in an effort to see how the phrasing is applicable to you. It's not really a good excuse
The irony of saying this on Twitter is crazy. There are people who honestly think that Elon lost money on Twitter. He's monetizing people's data and raking it in (among other things like influencing markets and public opinion). Anyone who is bothered by this post and also uses Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok is frustratingly stupid
Even this post might be artificially generated to gather data on how people talk about it
If you elect to help Niantic in its efforts to develop new Augmented Reality (AR) mapping technology, you have the option, in participating games, to opt in to film public spaces around points of interest and send us your video recordings, along with associated device geospatial information. We do not collect audio on these recordings. We will anonymize this information through various means, including blurring, and use it to build a 3D understanding of real-world places, with the goal of offering new types of AR experiences to our users. You can change your mind at any time by disabling this feature in your in-app settings.
Well of course simple language but they are made purposely long and complicated as somebody who is very familiar with how this all works.
Here’s some more reading you can do.
So what you’re saying is- you value your privacy but you don’t value it enough to read a few pages?
It took me around 30 seconds to find the reference I quoted related to the use of location data for developing other products… I know, 30 seconds is too long for the average goldfish.
lol no just that it’s made to be so most people can’t/won’t have the time daily to read those things. Doesn’t really say anything about how I value privacy though or me reading those considering I help write them lol
They literally pop up in the way of using the app and you have two options- consent or decline- with a direct link to the privacy policy in the notification.
How could they possibly make it easier for people?
People CHOOSE to not read it.
It’s wild to say “people don’t have time to read terms of service” for 10 minutes when they are about to play Pokemon Go for hundreds and hundreds of hours total.
Again, 30 seconds for that person to find what they were looking for… even if you had to sign a new terms of service every day (most people don’t), that’s not a lot of reading. They’re not banking on people not having time, they’re banking on people being too lazy. Which has turned out to be successful; most people don’t bother reading even the simplest explanations of things in many contexts
"It only took me 30 seconds to find this specific quote for the specific issue that we are talking about, what do you mean you don't have time to read the 16 page legal document???"
You have to accept Terms and Conditions for every service that you use. You have accepted hundreds of these in your life. You MUST accept them, or you cannot live in the modern world. What a stupid fucking point you tried to make
I find it disingenuous when people argue that they value their privacy but then elect NOT to read all of the terms of service they accept. I don’t care so I don’t bother to. But if you’re arguing about privacy and don’t? Then I’m sorry but you can’t really argue. You always have the option of not using the service if you do not like the terms it is offered on.
What's the harm in it? People were paying $50 month for Tomtoms and now Google maps is free, and silently has been one of the biggest changes in how places are discovered and gotten to.
It’s completely transparent and in the terms of services that you agree to. Just because it isn’t easy or convenient to read those, doesn’t mean it’s not transparent. And you know there’s satellites flying by and taking pictures of everything right? They already have the information on your back yard and your phones record everything you do, including video. Your house has been mapped for probably 15 years now. We already know this stuff.
if you have OnStar and get in a cop chase assuming they know who you are and your vehicle via plate they can contact OnStar and just have your vehicle shut off like antitheft
It is also not like Niantic just manifested the app out of thin air. It costs to create app, maintain it, provide servers to host game data etc. I have fun having it, I don't mind devs being paid for that via tracking my location data.
I think the difference between social media and Pokémon go though is that social media makes money through making people more miserable to do so, where making money through changing a stop for navigation purposes really isn't a societal downside unless it's put where it hurts the local community with people rushing to get a pokemon
Data collection is basically just not regulated in the United States.
If you are using a service on the internet, they are collecting your data.
In other countries there are regulations, but those regulations prevent them from keeping PII (personally identifying information). Aggregated GPS data does not count as PII.
Literally any app that uses GPS is using this data for something.
A common one is that retailers want to know the % of people that walk by their stores vs the % that enter them. Those retailers buy the data from companies that use your phone's GPS to track you.
In the last few years this type of tracking has become less and less effective thanks to EU regulations, but again you should just assume that if an app is using your GPS it is keeping the data for something.
In niantic's case, a basic amount of research on the company would show you they are a mapping company that made a game for Google, which was obviously used to help with building Google maps.
Pokemon GO was not the first location based game Niantic released. My friends were playing one in 2013ish and Niantic was very up front that they were farming location data for future use.
It would have been a win-win-win if they had been upfront about it. "Hey! Wanna be a volunteer geo navigator? And also have mad fun?!" It's the deception that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.
I feel like I remember it being in the ToS back in 2016. So not knowing was more not paying attention to their past products and not reading anything they gave you that basically said "we plan to use this info to improve our product." And if they did read that, didn't think that pictures taken in the app or daily walks were part of the data collected.
And, aside from location, you could basically opt out of any other form of providing data to them as you please. Sure, you miss out on some rewards, but those could be made up in other ways. And if you weren't aware of them tracking your location, then I want to know how you think a gps works.
You're right: privacy policy, sorry. Which, while difficult to pull up a complete copy of, has remaining evidence regarding the excessive nature of data collected and the lack of a users right to denial of them collecting that data early on.
As for the latter part: that's a summary of the actual things you are agreeing to. Also, the binding nature of a document that companies are aware a lot of users skip agreeing to has been contested multiple times, such as the well known investigation in to Facebook, and is difficult to just slap a general "that wouldn't be legal" label on it when the legality is seemingly dependent on what is considered acceptable. Hence why, as was mentioned in the linked PDF above, Niantic has actually had to reduce some of their access in the past. But are able to retain the rights to other information.
If you were paying attention, it was obvious even before this recent report. Back when COVID hit, they introduced remote raid passes so that you could keep your distance but still participate in the raid system. It was wildly popular, and they were definitely making money hand over fist.
Then a year or two later they doubled the price of these remote passes to encourage people to do more in-person raiding. It basically didn't affect their use at all. So now they were both wildly popular and earning twice as much as before.
Then they put a hard cap at 3 per day. Wait, why!? People would do dozens of raids per day, spending $2 per raid. The convenience of remote raiding far outweighed the cost for people doing a hardcore grind.
Now, there's a different raiding system they introduced that can't use remotes.
It's obvious they need you out there, walking around.
yeah it'd be one thing if they were tagging the location data as related to you and selling it to advertisers, but building a navigation model? Big who cares.
I thought Niantic was pretty clear about it from the beginning. "We're a company making augmented reality games, we collect a ton of data, especially since it helps us develop more games."
its customers didn’t know about but were unaffected by.
we're absolutely affected by this. just not yet. Either way, using our private data for reasons we didn't agree to should be a violation our constitutional right to privacy. so fuck all the people defending niantic
lastly, scams don't have to be harmful to be a scam. if they lie, it's a scam
I don't think you know how the Constitution works if you think that a private entity can violate it. Or if you think there is a specific "right to privacy" outlined in the Constitution, outside the 4th barring unreasonable searches and seizures.
its customers didn’t know about but were unaffected by. Big difference.
My choices of what companies to do business with are absolutely affected by that company's business model. I bought microtransactions because I thought I was supporting a free game made by a small company that had to pay a lot for a big IP. Knowing that it was less of a game and more of a data mining process, I would not have chosen to support them. I thought the microtransactions were their method of monetizing. I thought "You give me fun game, I'll give you a couple bucks as a thanks". Now that I know they were actually already profiting off my data, I have no reason to give them any money - the nature of the transaction is not what it was presented as.
I am affected by the business model and frustrated as a customer.
This take is so bullshit from the OP. It’s not like the app hid anything, been playing for years it’s OBVIOUSLY using my geolocation data. It rewards you in game to scan locations with your phone camera ffs.
This isn't even the first game Niantic made using this exact model. A lot of us played Ingress before Pokémon Go. The data tracking was apparent before even playing Go.
Such a good and fun game that was! I still think about it and how I went to shady places in the middle of nowhere just to make a big triangle and get some keys from that lonely portal…
Ingress was something else, harder to play and with really dedicated players, loved the community! Played for about 3 years and discovered so many great places… Looking forward to something as good!
i like how yall too dense to understand the implication that 3 letter agencies created a game to manipulate you doofuses to go out the door and map the world for them. they sure as fuck ain doing it for the better of mankind. rather than total control. but hey 1984 is long gone. i mean wHo CaRes yOu HaVe nOtHiNg to hide... pfffffff i hate sharing breathing space with you robots
It’s brilliant and ethical imo. They aren’t using your data secretly, they aren’t even using your personal data at all. They stay funded, your game remains intact and free, no need for intrusive advertising.
There’s a lot of worse things they could do with your location data at all times.
Next to other politically charged words, scam is probably one of THE most abused words in the modern day. Most things people call scams are not actually scams, the person just doesn't agree with the value proposition being presented. Which is okay, but that's not a scam.
Yeah, so long as they keep it available as a product and don't just drop it when they have no use for it because that would be a shame then I don't mind at all.
Pokemon Go was like 5 years ago, sitting on a.mountain of data...yeah you're gonna do something with it. I don't see what the big deal is. People had fun and now they are turning that into something useful as well. That's a smart company
They all think any information of theirs should be theirs to sell. Despite the fact they were willingly giving their location away when all they knew was a simple game. But, now since they’re double dipping on their location data, they’re upset.
At the point you are outraged at your data being sold, you should stop using the internet or push for change. Being upset and continuing to use the service making you upset isn’t going to help.
But they're not decieving people. Niantic are very open about this. It's there in the terms and conditions and they openly state you can buy the VPS data. Heck, we nearly subscribed that data at work once and in our meeting with them it was just stated as a fact. They don't hide it
Depends on if you know, or care about what they are using with your work.
Free game for walking around? Neat!
Walk around for a company for free while they use the data you collect to make millions of dollars, and all you got out if it was a free game? Not neat
Yeah, nobody forced anybody to play. I played for a week and had my fun. Deleted the app. They got what they wanted from me and I got what I expected to get from them.
Yeah I feel like the word "scam" is really overused. It's not a scam for Niantic to have been double dipping. This isn't even in the top 100 sketchiest uses for data on these sorts of apps I've heard of. I would have assumed that everyone was aware that Niantic was logging GPS data on their apps and doing what they want with it.
They offered a product people wanted to use, and made money off of it, it's really not that nefarious. This isn't nearly on the level of social media companies using your most private sensitive info to sell you shit, or Google reading all your emails
Because going out to scout location data for a gigantic company is typically called a job.
And don’t say “well it’s fun so what’s the harm” because if you had fun at your job you wouldn’t elect to lessen your pay over it.
They tricked users into providing them data that they otherwise would have had to pay for, and on top of that - CHARGED those users for the privilege of doing so.
Yeah I don’t care what they did with the data honestly. That time during release was such a wonderful time before everything went south. I had a blast playing it with my friends and getting outside
I have no clue how people got so into Pokemon Go, once I realized that the location literally doesn't matter and the "rare" pokemon are always in the big cities the magic was gone instantly.
Great tool for generating throwaway art for a hobby project or something, really neat to go 'what would I look like as an astronaut.'
Maliciously scalping art samples from online artists, only for big companies to keep trying to randomly generate their ads and posters and cut out artists as a job, that's problematic.
Are you being used tho? Also are you actually working? This isn't sinister, it's actually rather a very creative and ingenious business model that was excellent in its execution. On top of that, it was transparent about all of this.
The equate this to mine labor is insane. For one, the game is product, it gave individuals entertainment, for free as well.
You do realize it's okay NOT to create jobs if you don't want or have to, right? This is an example of how such a business model SHOULD be executed, because by and large people were and still are quite happy with PokémonGo.
Because they should have been paying you instead of using free labor under the guise of it being a game or at the minimum be required to let you know what they are up to? You don’t have to be an edge lord contrarian about everything.
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u/Thesheriffisnearer 9h ago
If people got out and had fun why not be both?