𝔽𝕩𝕠𝕞𝕥Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data
DimlyLitFlutteringMothI’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.
Wow, level 50‽ (Now that I have your attention with my asshole opener…) 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 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.