Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data
(www.404media.co)
from fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world on 12 Mar 2025 21:15
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39815436
from fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world on 12 Mar 2025 21:15
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39815436
Unpaywalled: archive.is/7yc9S
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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.
Judging by what they did with the data from Xitter, this will cost someone their life. Anything to make a quick buck, though…
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.
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.
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.
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.
With a bit of luck they still have a GDPR deletion process in place.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
Good video. Nailed a lot of game behavior.
Scopely games are just a bunch of mixed dark patterns reskinned with some popular IP
www.darkpattern.games
I guess I’m going back to not walking.
walkscape.app
Currently in closed beta.
<img alt="What is Walkscape?Walkscape is a game inspired by some old school MMORPGs. But this game has one major trick up its sleeve: you don’t play actively, but instead gain progress by walking.You can expect a fun and exciting journey through the World of Arenum while also having the motivation to walk!" src="https://i.ibb.co/7tyR6tdj/Screenshot-20250312-231435-Firefox.jpg">
Runescape but it requires physical exercise? Sign me the fuck up!
Great app, 1.52M steps since last April. Super simple walking app that gives you progress through steps. You can gain progress in chopping trees, smelting, crafting gear, etc. passively through your phone’s pedometer.
Was just about to post this! Been in the closed beta since January. Usually checking into the app before I leave for work/home or on the bus.
Moving over to another proprietary location data hoarder is not really a good solution, though.
walkscape.app/privacy-policy.html
This is awesome. Thanks!
Maproulette.Org it’s built to give you challenges around you that help improve and add to open street maps.
StreetComplete helps improve OpenStreetMap.
Great app, I recommend everyone give it a try
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.Probably throw planes at you.
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?
I don’t think anyone playing a game in which the main mechanic is tracking your location is the type of person to look anything up.
Lol if anyone looked at my pokemon go data, they’d think I was some playboy with a private jet that visits Jakarta one day, and Tokyo the next. They also think I have insomnia and wander around in half mile circles all night. They think I have some insane government access when I visit chernobyl or tour the entirety of Italy right in the middle of their worst covid lockdowns.
I disassembled one of my phones and physically detached the extra antenna bits for the GPS, making it extremely unreliable, and a little aluminum foil on top can start to throw my location 500ft in a random direction.
Pokemon go provides direct feedback for gps spoofing in a way I haven’t seen available anywhere else. The game isn’t too fun, but learning where I can break GPS is a pretty fun game. The game of cat and mouse with Niantic detecting spoofers has been interesting to say the least.
I didn’t understand how making your GPS more unreliable allowed you to be located in far away countries.
I thought the break would suggest two separate ideas, but in a sense it does help. Some spoofing can start ‘rubber banding’ between the spoofed location and the actual location, and if youre spoofing 1000 miles away, thats an insant soft ban. but if your phone never gets a proper fix on like 5 GPS satellites, you won’t rubber band.
I mostly used the damaged GPS phone to idly increase walking distance. If I set it to charge in a basement my character just bounces all around the outside of the house and I can wake up to a cool 10km walked. There’s better options for fake walking though.
If you’re interested in GPS spoofing, you can find a wealth of information by searching for ‘gps spoofing’ with ‘pokemon go’ tacked on the end. It takes an idea that otherwise makes you sound like a paranoid person and turns it into just cheating at a videogame.
Or probably not as I have never played the game… I’m still annoyed by this headline format.
Time to never use any of their products again
Can you prove this is worse than an insideous, shitty company like Niantic? No. No you cannot.
FUCK Niantic, and fuck this xenophobic noise.
Yes I can. Saudi Arabia is where modern slavery still happens. Women have no rights. The country funds proxy wars in the Middle East. Everyone who’s rich in that country is rich through exploiting oil, religion, terrible work conditions, or some combination of all the above. The only other country that out-does them on this front is The United Arabic Emirates.
A succesful company in that country would be party to all those things. Giving money to such a company would be giving money in support of all these things, as the money you give them becomes part of their economy. Pokemon GO would only be bought by any company because they see the potential of it becoming a money printing machine.
Being critical =/= xenophobic.
Yes, i’d love my data to be owned by oil barons that want to see me decapitated.
The sauds are the most evil people alive. And i’m saying this as an arab.
Koreans might disagree with this statement.
OOTL, who is it for them, then?
The Kim dynasty. How can one be out of the loop about the basics of North Korea?
Why are you being hostile? I just mostly focus on middle eastern politics.
I’d argue while the kim dynasty are the worst in the korean peninsula, they aren’t as much of a danger as the sauds globally.
I’m not.
Maybe broaden your horizon.
Yeah, the ones with nukes and fighting a war against Europe are not a danger.
First sports washing and now game washing.
Yay, capitalism.
Really feeling that free market…
media.tenor.com/…/dyinginside-suffering.gif
And what’s so wrong in this particular case?
The sauds are the last people you want to own anything you use.
I don’t get how that’s capitalism’s fault though
Capitalism is the fault.
Because it allows people’s data to be sold off. In other words, we’re the product.
Then the “yay capitalism” phrase can be applied to any digital product, and not just to this one then
Not any, but you’re right, it can be applied to quite a few products unfortunately.
Bad people are allowed to do bad things as long as they have the money for it.
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
Not mine. Pokemon emeraud forever
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? 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.
Lol everyone owns your data except for you
I guess I’m glad I had a windows phone during the Pokémon go craze
Ah yes… “freedom” under capitalism means being owned by some disgusting oil tyrant.
.
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.
unpaywalled: archive.is/7yc9S
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Investment_Fund
If you can’t see the article i will paste it for you.
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.
Anyone that groups individuals with their government is a bigot advertising their bigotry.
Edit: looks like I upset some bigots.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/86a4ce0b-ed28-45b9-b851-efaf9ba34ed1.gif">
there are cases where this is more or less true. I think the less democratic/representative and more oppressive a government, the less fair it is to group a people with their regime. the saudis have an absolute monarchy that bone-saws journalists in foreign countries.
which probably fucks up their culture something awful, but not in the same ways their government is monstrous.
I guess I’m pretty suspicious of all states and the control they exert over the average person to use that metric. It’s my opinion that if democracy worked, it’d be illegal (or subverted by a CIA-backed coup).
well, yes. I don’t think a government can completely align with the values of the people it dominates, they are inherently shitty, but shittiness is a spectrum.
and yes, that is what the CIA is for. that, and cocaine trafficking.
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.
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
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.
“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
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.
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. 💪
Tell me again how tik tok is a Chinese spy network? When they can just BUY our information like this?
Because a lie told often enough becomes true.
Realistically, every useful idiot is afraid to say they don’t know if a Chinese company is a spy network because it’s sooooooooo obvious even asking for proof makes them look stupid.
Ironically, not asking for proof is what makes us stupid.
If something is “so obviously true” yet nobody can provide evidence for it when asked, it’s probably the propaganda mill doing its job.
We know who pushed for the TikTok ban and why.
Imagine uncontroled popular mass media.
www.jpost.com/…/article-798115
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.
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.
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.
Wait until you find out that Saudi Arabia have a big stake in Disney, Facebook and OpenAI.
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.
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.
I’d imagine this isn’t going to stop anyone from using it though.
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