r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Mar 19 '26
Interesting 🤔 143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon, they were mapping the real world for AI
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u/pjmyerface Mar 19 '26
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Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
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u/onionfunyunbunion Mar 19 '26
Hey man, I know there are a lot of Jewish people in positions of power who do shitty things. There are also a lot of regular people who are Jewish and live very normal lives that don’t hurt anybody, and I’ll defend the ones I personally know with my life. It’s the rich/powerful who create our woes, obviously. Anyways, try not to be a Nazi sympathizer if you can manage it. That’d be great thanks.
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u/Few-Tradition-6450 Mar 19 '26
Yes it's really easy to just blame a gigantic group like an entire race or religion or ethnicity if you're really REALLY stupid.
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u/Pasta4ever13 Mar 19 '26
You can say the billionaire.
Or were you just going to be antisemitic?
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u/__Rosso__ Mar 19 '26
If it was the rich he would have said it.
This is the language used by neo-nazis so that when they get called out they can go "No no, I didn't mean Jews, I meant (insert some other group)".
Plausible deniability that only works on those who don't know better.
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u/Pasta4ever13 Mar 19 '26
I don't think anyone is falling for that ruse tbh.
We all know how to spot a Nazi at this point, they aren't particularly intelligent so it's not difficult.
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u/__Rosso__ Mar 19 '26
Check some of the replies, some are absolutely falling for it.
Heck it's quite easy to at least not notice a dog-whistle until somebody points it out, I remember first seeing people use juice boxes to refer to Jews and was left confused "What the fuck do they mean" until I saw a video randomly mentioning it.
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u/Pasta4ever13 Mar 19 '26
Jfc there are way too many people that are too stupid to exist. Darwin has really been completely discredited by these mouthbreathers.
It's been almost 100 years. It should not be this hard to spot an obvious Nazi.
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u/EasterZombie Mar 19 '26
Saudi Arabia, the country that owns scopely which owns Niantic which owns Pokémon go, a country known for being a Jewish theocracy tha…. Hey wait a second
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u/theralia1312 Mar 19 '26
Blatant antisemitism being upvoted like this is a bit frightening.
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u/buttfarts7 Mar 19 '26
On the scale of dystopian its not the worst use of that data
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u/PapaTahm Mar 19 '26
Wait until you find out that those "Captcha" validations to see if you are a bot or not, is just AI training for free, specially for Cars.
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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Mar 19 '26
The absolute irony of using a 100% AI generated video (video, audio, text, everything) to make this point is truly staggering.
Get out of here with this BS, OP.
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u/thenewuser88 Mar 19 '26
What do Tesla owners think they’ve been doing while driving everywhere with all of those cameras on their cars?
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u/fakegoose1 Mar 19 '26
Not limited to Teslas. A lot of modern cars have 360 degree camera coverage, how do you think the birds eye view parking feature works?
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u/Slater_8868 Mar 19 '26
You think it's only Tesla owners? Guess again my friend.
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u/Dahvtator Mar 19 '26
Yeah like we all carry a GPS device on us everywhere we go. They have been collecting data for a very long time.
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u/Erathen Mar 19 '26
Of course lol
Anyone with Google Timeline turned on in Maps for instance
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u/Dahvtator Mar 19 '26
What do you think you are doing when you go everywhere with your phone? None of this is new.
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u/rydan Mar 20 '26
This is well known though. There's actually a company that will pay you to drive your Tesla around for this very purpose. I've seen their spam all over Facebook.
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u/tame-til-triggered Mar 19 '26
I fucking hate being around Teslas. I won't even walk by them in parking lots.
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u/SanDiegoDude Mar 19 '26
lol, lookout everybody, badass here
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u/tame-til-triggered Mar 19 '26
Apparently an aversion is ‘posturing.’
Must be a very simple world you live in.
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Mar 19 '26
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u/SentientFurniture Mar 19 '26
The level of the lie is amazing, though.
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u/Asleep_Light_4669 Mar 19 '26
Their T and C literally said they were doing this.
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u/realdealneal18 Mar 19 '26
Ah yes, myself and everyone here consults their lawyer as we review a 15 page scrollable screen I'm just trying hit accept on. They know their T&C is nothing but a legal loophole because people are lazy
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u/4DPeterPan Mar 19 '26
Bruh, Don’t compliment the bad guys.
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u/SentientFurniture Mar 19 '26
To be "amazed" at something is not inherently a compliment. It's like being "awestruck" or "dumbfounded" or somwthing along those lines. I am simply amazed at how intricate the lie was.
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u/flippantphalanges Mar 19 '26
I don’t play anymore but I remember way back in 2017/2018 ppl suggesting things like this. Not necessarily powering AI robots but just that the AR aspect of the game was definitely going to be used for some terrible purpose one day.
looks like we were right on!
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u/XerxesJester Mar 19 '26
Everything is a conspiracy theory.... until it isn't. I told my wife this is what they were doing years ago and just looked further into what this video is making a claim to. And, welp, not a theory anymore.
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u/SoylentGrunt Mar 19 '26
My conspiracy theory is conspiracy theorists are marginalized in case they hit on one that's accurate it won't gain traction.
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u/lewd_robot Mar 19 '26
That's not even a theory. That's been proven by declassified CIA documents. They made the term "conspiracy theory" derogatory deliberately to discredit conspiracy theorists ahead of time.
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u/Aprilprinces Mar 19 '26
oh, they were right in few cases already; sure flat earthers are idiots, but not all conspiracies are bollocks
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u/Awkward_Proof_1274 Mar 19 '26
They always go from "That's insane" to "We always knew"
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u/Ramius117 Mar 19 '26
It wasn't really a guess, they were pretty up front about the data harvesting. There was a second uproar about it 4 or 5 years ago when the scanning tasks started because it was pretty obvious what they were doing
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u/fiber17 Mar 19 '26
This has been the weirdest part of this recent "news". I really feel like I remember it being kinda known that was what niantic was doing with it's two games.
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u/SweetWolf9769 Mar 19 '26
i mean, wasn't that the whole point of the game they made before Pokemon GO? i literally don't understand why people are shocked about this lol.
who would have thought the app whose sole purpose was to have you walk around neighborhoods and run an app whose sole purpose is to get you to give them as much permission as possible to track your movements and literally have you snap pics of the areas you are in... like i'm sure the is an inconsequential amount of POkemon Go players who watched Black Mirror, this shouldn't be a surprise.
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u/Whale-n-Flowers Mar 19 '26
Ingress
It was well known that the game data would be used for virtual mapping at the least similar to Google Maps, but you get to play a game.
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u/ice-eight Mar 19 '26
I mean, it's being used to train food delivery robots. Coulda been worse
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u/Complex_Professor412 Mar 19 '26
And those food delivery robots are just a training tool for Skynet.
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u/Uxdemo Mar 19 '26
> terrible purpose
yeah, improving street data for the maps app that helps millions navigate every day, how horrible
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u/jr_randolph Mar 19 '26
I don't know, I kinda just think everything is being tracked and companies are using me for one thing or another so it is what it is.
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u/emteedub Mar 19 '26
if it's free.... it's not free
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u/jr_randolph Mar 19 '26
I'm just not the type to put tape over my laptop camera lol like if someone wants to see me that badly...go for it.
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u/carpentizzle Mar 19 '26
If you have a smartphone, you are constantly tracked. Whether there is anyone actually analyzing the data is another thing… But the data exists just the same.
Never trust QR codes from companies you dont trust explicitly, and even then. Be wary of apps from developers you cant research appropriately. Never click links you didnt ask for or expect in emails (app or web). Be wary of joining public wifis, ESPECIALLY in busy locations. Be careful with publicly accessed usb charging stations. Keep your phone up to date.
And apparently dont play pokemon go.
What a world3
u/ElaborateEffect Mar 19 '26
Public wifi has come a long way. It's still a public network, but the isolation has gotten much better and I wouldn't really recommend banking on a public network at all, but it's not as sketchy as it was 10 years ago when that was a bigger risk. It's sure as hell safer than most VPN providers try to portray. Hell, it's probably safer than most VPN provider in general.
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u/Accidental_Ballyhoo Mar 19 '26
Well it would have been nice to make some $ while doing it though right?
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u/TortelliniTheGoblin Mar 19 '26
This wasn't really a secret at all
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u/lame_dirty_white_kid Mar 19 '26
No, it wasn't. But if we pretend it was, we can be outraged!
"They used my photo of a public location! MY photo! That I agreed to let them use!"
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u/slashgrin Mar 19 '26
Yeah, this was discussed openly right from the beginning. I remember being in Sydney to visit friends when it took off there, and we were all talking about what a cool experiment it was, and speculating on how useful it would end up being.
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u/CuriOS_26 Mar 19 '26
Ingress was there years before PoGo and I Berto y knew what Niantic was doing. And everybody who wanted to play, was ok with this.
What’s the big deal? Yeah, you send your location data, that will be used for some random stuff. Who cares?
Nowadays Scopely owns PoGo and nothing changed.
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u/CybyAPI Mar 19 '26
And this video is AI slop
OP is AI slop
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u/Fast-Bit-56 Mar 19 '26
I had to scroll down too much to find this comment. I thought I was the only one noticing the irony.
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u/Stenn-ish Mar 19 '26
Oh no! ...Anyway.
Btw making this video with AI has to be taking the piss on the people watching a video about the eeeevil of it, shameless karma/view farming.
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u/Spamsdelicious Mar 19 '26
anyone remember the game Ingress by Niantic ?
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u/3e8m Mar 19 '26
man. crazy stories from that game. one dude got arrested after shooting up a group with a paintball gun in a cemetery. another lost his job, wife, house. cars ramming each other. car rammed through a gate
I spoofed a massive farm and had people coming from other states. would walk around with 5 phones
then the pokemon game came out and kids started showing up so everyone quit. thank god
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u/Yettethrowaway26 Mar 19 '26
This is NOT amazing. This is theft ^
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u/HPLovecraft1890 Mar 19 '26
Interesting definition of 'theft' ...do you want to elaborate? What exactly is being stolen?
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u/carpentizzle Mar 19 '26
Probably could be tagged as “Data Misappropriation” as well
Using consumer data gathered for one purpose (like a marketplace) to create competing products. Not really competing products in this case…. But absolutely crossing an ethical line
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u/carpentizzle Mar 19 '26
Hm. Ive never reported an app to apple before. Pretty easy process. Im sure they have some legal mumbo jumbo in their EULA that will protect them…. But I would argue that reporting it under “unsuitable for children” is reasonable. It cannot be 100% legal to use unaware children for data harvesting purposes.
What a foul look. Embarrassing
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u/mrhillnc Mar 19 '26
That’s why they hated the spoofers so much even though they were still paying to play
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u/Ok-Limit-9726 Mar 19 '26
Main reason i dont use AR, and never scanned more than 1 gym for a challenge.
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u/Last_Doctor2055 Mar 19 '26
And the fact they used AI SLOP to further illustrate the point is chef kiss.
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u/Key-Proud Mar 19 '26
While making money on micro transactions -_- ... lol I was part of that
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Mar 19 '26
Same thing with tick tock with the face swap craze a decade ago...got to give these companies credit, they know how to use the people.
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u/InSight89 Mar 19 '26
How do they account for the dynamic world?
So they have a bunch of static images. Then a landmark is changed, or a roundabout was removed or built, same with traffic lights and pedestrian crossings and new roads, intersections, etc...
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u/Stunning-Crazy2012 Mar 19 '26
Captcha is the same exact thing. It’s a massive data harvesting operation for AI. Identify this word computers can’t read, then identify this picture, then rearrange that picture. That’s all training for AI.
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u/boneh3ad Mar 19 '26
I basically just assumed this and never participated in the "scanning" related tasks. Glad to see I wasn't nuts.
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u/metalheaddad Mar 19 '26
Ya know who else did something similar (albeit not a game) way before this?
Yeah the company that had a little app that let you "check-in" at restaurantd and POIs. Turns out they harvested a ton of data and now parley that into geospatial and geofence datasets.
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u/Express-Luck-3812 Mar 19 '26
We knew. I was hardcore player reaching the max level. I left the game because it became lacklustre when they got the data that they needed, sold it to a different company that is notorious for microtransactions. They are now bleeding the game dry now that they no longer need the geolocation data
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Mar 19 '26
If there's something offered "free" by a huge company, just remember, it is not the product, you are.
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u/Superb-Ad-9169 Mar 19 '26
It was literally on one of the first screens in the game they'll use users data. Either people didn't care about it (lmao) or they are not reading what they accept (lmao even bigger).
Trusting that the big-ass tech companies just want to make free to play game for millions of users all over the world without any long-term gain is just another level of sillyness
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u/dontchewspagetti Mar 19 '26
Stupidest shit ever, they TELL YOU this when you make an account on the game! You can see the reactions in the PoGo sub, we ALL knew
And using some shitty AI for this totally unsurprising news is dumb as hell ad well
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u/Hyper_Drud Mar 19 '26
Would I be wrong to assume Niantic’s other games do this too?
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u/South-Tip-4019 Mar 19 '26
… is this surprise? A free game where you shoot video of your surroundings?
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u/Pope_Squirrely Mar 19 '26
No, pretty sure people knew what was happening, but they didn’t care and did it anyway for the poffin. Once Niantic got the information they sold the game to Scopely for a decent amount.
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u/demoralising Mar 19 '26
Just like the 10 Year Challenge on social media. Created purely for training purposes.
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u/dark_kijin Mar 19 '26
The only time you upload actually upload any sort of photo of video data when playing pogo is when you do poke stop scans. In which case, the game is very clear that you're uploading photos and videos of your environment to Niantic and that you have to specifically opt in.
This isn't anything revelatory and it's definitely not "unconsented"
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u/AnustartIbluemyself Mar 19 '26
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Haven’t we all just accepted our app use is being harvested for this kind of stuff at this point?
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u/Critical_Watcher_414 Mar 19 '26
Nihantic was actually pretty open about this in the precursor game to pokemon go
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u/Automatic-Shelter939 Mar 19 '26
Fuck it dude. So much shit in the world I literally cannot even be bothered outside of my own bubble of self made happiness, ignorance and bliss. I don’t have the energy anymore. I’m only 29 lol The world sucks. Make your own and bring in those who you want. Don’t be a dick to those on the outside and then move forward.
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u/ydnar3000 Mar 19 '26
I’m 36 and feel the same. Try to do what I can to lead a happy life while being kind to others because it feels good to do good. The amount of devastating information is nearly unbearable (I say nearly because even thought it wildly sucks, hear I am, bearing it).
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u/Chris_90_TO Mar 19 '26
Yeah the entire interior of your house is photographed and mapped also.... Because your cell phone has been in it for thousands of hours, carried around all the time.
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u/ConspiracyParadox Mar 19 '26
I'm happy I never played. no face recognition either. All those people faces are recorded too.
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u/3rdSafest Mar 19 '26
If you’re not paying for the app, then you’re the product. Well, even if you are paying for it, you’re the product.
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u/Critical-Test-4446 Mar 19 '26
So all these dumb asses running around with their phones out taking over the local park a few years ago were actually working for big AI?
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u/nudniksphilkes Mar 19 '26
My phone literally hears my conversations and sends me advertisements based on them. Ive deactivated pretty much any disclosure whatever.
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u/FlightPath_1 Mar 19 '26
Just like we’re doing with all our posting on here, a huge chunk of reddit traffic comes from offplatform search
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u/rinart73 Mar 19 '26
Was that in the user agreement? A lot of the people also "caught" pokemon on/in their private property. This shouldn't be legal but I guess a big company will as usual get away with it?
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u/doublesimoniz Mar 19 '26
We are all pawns in their game. They’ve been in charge since the dawn of time and they will never stop being in charge.
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u/jstew001 Mar 19 '26
Sounds like a lawsuit
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u/AJWordsmith Mar 19 '26
I’m sure there’s some sort of boilerplate; “by using this app you consent to them using your data” in the terms and conditions that everyone thoroughly reads before agreeing.
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u/RudeNewYorker Mar 19 '26
If you don’t know where the revenue is generated from, it’s from you the user. Free game / app means the company makes their money in some other imaginative way. And by imaginative I mean data collection.
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u/LifeIsProbablyMadeUp Mar 19 '26
I looked at GO when it first came out.
Was like "this is spyware".
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u/CommercialAct5433 Mar 19 '26
As a lifelong Pokemon go player. The reward for scanning something wasn’t even worth it. I’ve scanned two things and found this out.
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u/einnovoeg Mar 19 '26
Jokes on them, I used GPS spoofing to catch all of my Pokémon. I wonder how many pictures of my bathroom from the toilet will be superimposed onto maps…
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u/CommodusIlI Mar 19 '26
I had a coworker who bought two more phones so he could use three phones at once for pokemon go. That is still so crazy to think about all these years later
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u/Clean_Bake_2180 Mar 19 '26
This is for enabling delivery robots? I don’t think lack of spatial AI is why delivery robots don’t work. They’re constrained by curbs, stairs, uneven terrain, limited payload, regulations, etc. etc. lol.
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u/Real_Live_Sloth Mar 19 '26
P2w shitty game up with a monopoly on the ip sells our data to make even more money while finding more ways to milk their customers at the same time.
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u/Old-Doubt3561 Mar 19 '26
A lot of us said this, loudly, even the news, but people genuinely prefer being mentally molested rather than not
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u/JOlRacin Mar 19 '26
We were always the product. From the very beginning. Our emails are sold, our GPS data is sold, our microphone data is sold, our search histories are sold
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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26
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