Gotta Catch ‘Em All
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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Everybody all together now!
“IF THE PRODUCT IS FREE, YOU ARE????”
And? Does anyone actually lose out on this arrangement?
If people got out and had fun why not be both?
Similar to reddit. I have fun on reddit, I worked with people that played PokemonGO, they had a ton of freaking fun. They played with their kids. I say its a win/win.
You are the product, if the tool is free. You’re even the product if you’re paying a subscription. All of us must know this by now.
Fun fact: Old map companies would put fake roads and towns on their maps to see if other map makers copied them because it was a lot of work to map shit out.
Companies using people is nothing new. There’s a common phrase, “if something is free, you’re the product”. Like Facebook or free vpns, they are getting something outta it.
game’s the game at that point
Source?
It also got people to get off their asses and take walks. Game probably helped families get closer together
Where’s the scam? Who paid for something that they did not receive? Who was lied to at any point? If you played the game knowing it works using your location data and never considered that maybe the game might use that data then idk what to tell you
I didn’t know but I’m not at all surprised.
scam?
I care more about good navigation systems than I care about Pokémon go checking the routes people take. And I care very little about navigation systems
“A scam?” What were they scamming? Niantic sold a fun game about catching Pokémon in augmented reality. That’s exactly what they delivered. I fail to see how them also using GPS data to build a navigation model is supposed to be diabolical. If you really care so much about a developer using your GPS data, it’s a pretty stupid idea to play a game entirely dependent on using your GPS, which definitely says in the terms and conditions that they will use your GPS data. For the record I don’t even play Pokémon go and I agree with players that the recent microtransaction changes they made are greedy. But I think this poster is either tremendously dense about how free services work or stoking outrage on purpose for engagement.
This was known at the time. While intrusive, the tech does sound quite cool.
I really don’t care if they made money on it. People wanted the game and didn’t have to pay for it. Nothing wrong there. Using the location data to build a navigation model is not a big deal either. Everybody is getting what they want
Not many noticed the overlap of features in Ingress & Pokemon Go. In reality the latter is just a reskin of the geographic data from the former.
There were already issues with Ingress players being reported to police, getting killed in freak accidents & altercations when attempting trespass to denied areas.
>am I the only one who doesn’t know this?
Well, yes. It was talked about at length in the summer of 2016, which is the past time I played Pokemon go.
The claim about using the data for navigation is likely on point from what I understand, but that:
>’when they wanted location info, they would put a pokemon in that location’
Uh, that’s not how pokemon go works though? Players roaming around uncover pokemon in a radius around themselves, and there’s a ‘pokemon radar’ kinda feature that shows you pokemon around nearby pokestops, you can’t exactly ‘put a pokemon in a location’ to direct people to explore that space, you’d have to put a pokestop there first(which they were very stingy with at the start too), and then seed that location with pokemon for something like that, which clearly isn’t happening. You could do stuff like make people roam between spots by seeding pokestops in a pattern or something, but nobody is ‘putting pokemon in a location when they want location info’, players wouldn’t be able to see that pokemon even if they did.
Not a scam. Anyway Niantic was an offshoot from Google, you know, the company that’s all about data? The fact it popped off so hard was a massive score for Niantic. Gold mine of geo data.
What you’re missing is the fact that the average person does not give a shit about their personal data. The average person would let meta or Google review all their text messages if it meant they’d save 10 seconds
…. uhhh??? Google Maps and Waze do this,too… and they did it first. What do you think they are doing when you report in a wreck or a closed road? What do you think they are doing when you USE their app? Do you think they got their base data all by themselves? No! They took it from GPS and Map companies.
Like? … why are we acting like this is a scary thing? The data is on ROAD SYSTEMS. If you are this worried about someone tracking you, you shouldn’t even have a smart phone because your phone company has done this long before internet companies started.
Keep that same energy for Google. Google does the exact same thing, considering their “track my location” is on by default. Every single Android phone in existence except the small percentage who figured out how to turn it off is gathering location data and sending it to Google 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Around 4 BILLION phones collecting not just location data (GPS/Wifi/Cell towers) but also your search history, Youtube history, your entire contact list, every public event on your calendar, certain photos and videos, your mobile browser history, any time you use voice to text or make voice queries and payment information made through gPay. And you better believe Apple is doing it, too.
And Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat…all the social media platforms have been mining our data for yeeeears.
But yeah, PokemonGo is definitely what we should be freaking out about. /s
That’s not a scam. That’s a smart business model
I think this was a common thought. Weren’t people claiming GO was a national security risk at launch for this exact reason?
People seem to be so entitled that they believe companies actually make products for them to enjoy.
No, products are made to make money. No product is free. If you’re not paying dollars, the price is your data. Duhhhh
Wait until she finds out about GPS.
It wasn’t a scam. Thats how all these free apps make money. You give them data, they give you app.
lol. I used the emulator version and just hung out at ancient places like Stonehenge. I basically owned Stonehenge for a while
Yeah…I thought everyone knew this, they’ve being g doing it since Ingress.
You’d have to be a damned blind ass sheep not to figure this one out…
[You mean it was funded by the CIA, right?](https://www.networkworld.com/article/953621/the-cia-nsa-and-pokmon-go.html)
No?
> Niantic’s model is training and processing data using geolocation information from scans players submit of those real-world locations while playing Pokémon Go and other Niantic games.
This is literally told to you in game as an optional side feature. They even tell you why in game. This was added years after the game launched too.
A) It’s to make Pokemon spawns more characteristic
B) Google obviously already does this
C) Your local government already does this
D) Your favorite social media does this
E) At least you get a cool Charmander when you let Nintendo do it
Didn’t everyone know this already? Pokemon Go was just a reskin on their original game. And the original game was invented to help fill out Google Maps locations and travel data. This is all old news.