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…
Oh no, not only the very ethical American companies get my data?
What a disaster.Wait until you find out that Saudi Arabia have a big stake in Disney, Facebook and OpenAI.
Tell me again how tik tok is a Chinese spy network? When they can just BUY our information like this?
Probably they are all spy networks… Not to pee in your cereal or anything.
If everything is a spy network, then nothing is
Yeah this is a pretty dumb take. If all social media is stealing your info, then they are still all stealing your info. This is not “if everyone has superpowers nobody does,” it’s just a dipshit thing to say.
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We know who pushed for the TikTok ban and why.
Imagine uncontroled popular mass media.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-798115
Unpaywalled link is convenient but so do consider subscribing if you want to support this kind of journalism :
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A country that investing in any successful product doesn’t mean they want your data. If they are interested they can buy it directly from any large organization and if must they can use spy ware or other means of intelligence.
If you have privacy concern, you have bigger issue than a game that is for all we know is dying game.
Remember when the US was going to make them into a “pariah state”?
Thinks changed quickly when you could sell them $350,000,000,000 worth of murder stuff didn’t it?
Made a lot less waves back then.
Priorities I guess.Saudi Govt: So MbS, what are we doing this week?
MbS: Well, first we’re gonna buy Pokémon Go, and if THAT goes well, then we’ll try to negotiate peace for Ukraine.
Saudi Govt: Priorities, Crowned Prince Mohammed. 💪
Scopely is the company that bought Pokemon Go (and others). Scopely was not created by the Saudi Arabian Government as the article states. It was created in the US. But was purchased by Savvy Games (A Saudi Arabian company) in 2023. It still operates independently and is based in the US. Though I do admit they probably report up all the way. Scopely is also the developer of Monopoly Go.
A developer made Monopoly Go? All I need to know about them.
I’d imagine this isn’t going to stop anyone from using it though.
I’m glad I never played that game. Call me old fashioned but I prefer the original Pokemon games on the Gameboy, that’s all I ever played. It was fun going to friends’ houses and gatherings and trading Pokemon over Link cable. Fun times.
“Arab country bad”
Edit: the downvotes just prove my point, as if it matters if an Arab country you are likely to never visit had your location data or not.
While I have your attention, check your propaganda
“Arab country bad”
Yes but not because of ethnicity but because of human rights abuses.
The call is coming from inside the house
Both can be true and both can be bad, like what’s so hard about this concept? One country’s shortcomings do not excuse other countries shortcomings ffs.
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.
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.
cool story bro
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!
But at least Niantic always identified itself as a data collection company and not as game developers.
Judging by what they did with the data from Xitter, this will cost someone their life. Anything to make a quick buck, though…
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.
Just wait until the “sovereign fund” trump is starting puts up assets like “former national park”, “federal water rights”, “state and federal timber land”…it’s all just an asset to be plundered to him. A hotel company to flip.
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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.
With a bit of luck they still have a GDPR deletion process in place.
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.
They are, however, owned by the people who own the government that is repressive and discriminatory to people like yourself.
It’s all fair though, fuck Nazi Saudi and Nazi USA.
Yes, absolutely, which is why I’m moving away from those services. This just speeds things up in the case of PoGo since Saudi Arabia has has been much, much more blatant and apparent with this in prior years (c.f. The tragic case of Eden Knight).
I don’t usually buy the “but it’s ok if the company is American!!!” accusations because no corporation should be abusing your privacy, but I was just sitting here wondering why they think it is suddenly not ok if a foreign company is the one harvesting data.
I remember it being pretty big news when it was revealed, with government agencies making the app forbidden for their employees.
I don’t understand why Americans are more concerned with foreign governments having their data than their own.
Your own government can do much more nefarious things with it than a country a continent away.
Why would an American be mentioning GDPR?
For myself, it is much more about the ties to Saudi Arabia given that the country and government aren’t all too happy with LGBT people.
The US government is well on its way to be the same.
Yip, absolutely. Which is why I’m moving away from big tech products (one of the reasons I’m on Lemmy!).
Saudi Arabia is considerably worse though for LGBT rights so I don’t think there is any benefit in pushing whataboutism in this case. Both are awful, one is definitively more so.
Lol, but you were fine with Niantic collecting your data??
Goodness. Just… Goodness.
Location data? Yeah, naively I was since I’d previously been fine with Niantic’s work with Ingress. Hindsight is 20/20 though.
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
Good video. Nailed a lot of game behavior.
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.
