I'm a level 50 Pokémon Go player, who has played since release day, and that's the app deleted.
Next up will be requesting removal of my data under GDPR.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
895 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
66353 readers
4321 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Yet another good thing ruined by the Saudi government. Why can't we have nice things? :(
I don’t disagree with the sentiment but PoGo has been pretty trash for a while now
Yeah, but beforehand it was just a bad game (i don't play it, but it's clearly popular) but now it's directly profiting the worst group alive. If there wasn't a reason to leave before, there 100% is now.
Yeah. The second they announced it would be a thing, I said "what a great way to collect users data, and sell it to companies. PASS!
I'm known as someone who in general predicts the worst case scenario, and then time and time again is proven right. Even I didn't predict the ones buying this location data would be the Saudi government. I'm not surprised. I'm just surprised there's levels BELOW my pessismistic mindset, and now we're going there.
I never predicted nazis in usa government. I never predicted the usa government would be used as a shadow government for russia.
I viewed it more as "ugh, can you imagine going as low as I think we will? It's going to be bad.....". And now we're sinking so much lower. I THOUGHT we hid bedrock a few years ago. The only big thing I predicted that hasn't happened yet is the second american civil war. I still think it's coming, but now other things are going much lower than I thought they ever could.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Bold of you to assume this wasn't always the plan for Pokemon Go. A ton of online services are basically designed from the get go to be mass surveillance machines and the founders know they're eventually going to be sold as exactly that.
Of course it was. Niantic came out of Google with Ingress which was designed to collect data for Google!
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Pokémon GO hasn’t been good for a long time, sadly. The game was peak during the pandemic before Niantic absolutely turned it into a dumpster fire.
Orna does a much better job of scratching that GPS RPG itch for me, and it’s a better game in every way.
load more comments
(1 replies)
As far as I know, Saudi Arabia is not subject to the GDPR. They already have your data and will do whatever they want with it. I really don’t think there’s anything you can do to stop them.
But if I’m wrong, please let me know.
If they handle personal data of EU citizens, they need to comply with GDPR.
Now, what’s gonna happen if they don’t? I don’t know what mechanics are in place to deal with that.
While you are technically correct in that, everyone operating in Europe is required to comply with a GPR, there are many who don’t. And they face varying levels of punishment.
But Saudi Arabia is not in the EU, and social media company can register in whatever country they want despite their ownership.
So what will happen? They will fragrantly violate the GDPR, and escape any fines due to jurisdictional limitations. And even if they do face fines, there are some… “Political “ways to negate them.
Sadly, even Europe, as progressive as it is, sterilize on Saudi oil. That can always be used to pressure government representatives into complying with their well rather than the Will of the people.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Were you unaware of the last 10 years of Niantec/Google openly admitting that they were using camera and location data to train their models? Were you blinded by the fun of the game? Or did you just think the data you were uploading wasn’t that important?
Yes, I was aware though under the impression of improving geospatial and mapping models. There are many ways in which we are now entwined into these systems and so it's a matter of deciding, on a personal level, what you are comfortable with.
I am certainly not comfortable with the data going to Saudi Arabia where access to such is used for active suppression and harm.
Maybe it was a naive viewpoint at the time, but the climate of 2016 was very different to what it is now.
Niantic and Google are (were?) not companies with very strong links to the Saudi Arabian government.
I've seriously reconsidered how much I use Google in recent months, but Google and Niantic aren't owned by a government that is incredibly repressive and discriminatory of people like myself.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
I've tried some of scopely's games. They're following this playbook to the letter.
You'll be getting freebies when your friends spend cash. You'll get time limited offers. You'll be paying to "try again", against other players.
Who wins when a wall street broker and an oil sheikh use their wallets to fight over a Pokémon gym? Scopely wins.
Scopely games are just a bunch of mixed dark patterns reskinned with some popular IP
load more comments
(1 replies)
Saudi Arabia? I remember about 10 or so years ago that Saudi Arabia had banned Pokemon because "it promotes materialism".
What changed?
Money.
After MBS became the de-facto leader (after some purges, to centralize all the power to himself) he started "liberalizing" and giving us more freedoms. It's all bullshit.
Women weren't even allowed to drive four years ago. That was probably the only good thing he gave us.
Haven't played the game in years, and wasn't aware of any of this. People discussing "What's worse, Saudi Arabia or Niantic?" feels positively dystopian.
Saudi Arabia isn't a person. I hate it when news titles aren't specific enough. Is it the government that bought them? A private company? Just a dude that happens to be Saudi? The implications can change drastically based on who bought it.
Also the article link isn't working for me so all i got is the title. And as most people that'd see it, they'd also only read the title, this type of simplification can lead to a lot of misinformation. Or worse, racism, as you combine a whole country and its people to one entity which is dehumanizing. I'm speaking from experience as a Saudi person who's always grouped with the "saudi" or "Arabic " or "brown" groups instead of another human being.
In short, news should stop generalizing and be more specific, especially in the titles, the part that most people will interact with.
Saudi Arabia isn’t a person.
Yes, it is. In an autocratic monarchy, in a dictatorship, everything belongs to the king. The house of Saud is treating the country as their personal property and let's not pretend that anything would prevent the guy who killed a journalist in his embassy from accessing that data.
unpaywalled: https://archive.is/7yc9S
A Saudi Arabian company that was created by the Saudi Arabian government just purchased Pokémon Go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Investment_Fund
If you can't see the article i will paste it for you.
I'm speaking from experience as a Saudi person who's always grouped with the "saudi" or "Arabic " or "brown" groups instead of another human being.
So am i, and i'm also sick of it and the people who use this to fuel discrimination. I see this article as more of a reason to hate the sauds, not saudi people.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I mean, if it's in Saudi Arabia you know the royal family is in full control, so in this it kind of makes sense
I guess I'm going back to not walking.
Maproulette.Org it's built to give you challenges around you that help improve and add to open street maps.
Yay, capitalism.
The scene in Austin Powers when he first comes out of cryo and assumes the communists won the cold war makes a lot more sense to me as an adult
Really feeling that free market...
https://media.tenor.com/0BkvWV1SdzEAAAAM/dyinginside-suffering.gif
load more comments
(8 replies)
Oh man.. probably should have passed laws to regulate data harvesting and digital privacy back in the 90s
when the Internet was still just a series of tubes...
Lol everyone owns your data except for you
Oh no, not only the very ethical American companies get my data?
What a disaster.
Tell me again how tik tok is a Chinese spy network? When they can just BUY our information like this?
load more comments
(3 replies)
Time to never use any of their products again
I am a level 47 player, altho havent played the game for several months now due to its downfall. Guess, wont be going back
But you were fine with Niantic? Why? They were an awful and evil company. Did you never look them up?
load more comments
(4 replies)
Wait until you find out that Saudi Arabia have a big stake in Disney, Facebook and OpenAI.
Just curious what they end up doing with any of the location data?
Ask Jamal Khashoogshi
*Khashoggi
I'd assume same thing they did with the data from Xitter. Track down arab dissidents and ~~butcher them, then dissolve their remains in acid so no one can find their corpse.~~
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›