This is kind of a silly take.
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This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes they built a platform to try and monetise the same geolocation data using other IP - there was a failed Harry Potter game, an NBA game, and a Settlers of Catan game which didn’t even make it out of beta. Nothing else really worked
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This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes aCtUaLlY, Niantic's first real success and seeding point for most of the Pokemon Go POIs was Ingress. I'm convinced that Pokemon Go could not have achieved such widespread immediate success if the millions of Ingress players hadn't built the foundation.
Fun side note: In my hometown, many POIs are built along the routes that parents would take while dropping their kids off to school - they were combinding daily routine with playing Ingress and gamifying their life. -
This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes I'm really not sure how the data from Pokemon go gets you much that you don't get from tower data. Sure, it's sensitive data, but it's a subset of various other kinds of sensitive data everyone is already leaking.
It's certainly less data than LE get through telecom portals, or companies buy off providers. Feels like Niantic is playing bad guy to get cash for selling mostly redundant data.
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@hacks4pancakes I'm really not sure how the data from Pokemon go gets you much that you don't get from tower data. Sure, it's sensitive data, but it's a subset of various other kinds of sensitive data everyone is already leaking.
It's certainly less data than LE get through telecom portals, or companies buy off providers. Feels like Niantic is playing bad guy to get cash for selling mostly redundant data.
@hacks4pancakes also I don't know how pokemon go players are supposed to be doing something something AI given that the gameplay uses redundant paths a lot and mostly isn't capturing new meaningful data. It's just shaped like something scary.
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@hacks4pancakes I'm really not sure how the data from Pokemon go gets you much that you don't get from tower data. Sure, it's sensitive data, but it's a subset of various other kinds of sensitive data everyone is already leaking.
It's certainly less data than LE get through telecom portals, or companies buy off providers. Feels like Niantic is playing bad guy to get cash for selling mostly redundant data.
@quinn
@hacks4pancakes I think it's not that the days doesn't exist, but that the entities that have the tower data set are a) at least somewhat regulated, and b) interested in using a ~monopoly position to charge rent. It's worth it to Niantic to have their own free and unregulated copy, to rent for whatever purposes the industry is currently burning money. -
@hacks4pancakes I'm really not sure how the data from Pokemon go gets you much that you don't get from tower data. Sure, it's sensitive data, but it's a subset of various other kinds of sensitive data everyone is already leaking.
It's certainly less data than LE get through telecom portals, or companies buy off providers. Feels like Niantic is playing bad guy to get cash for selling mostly redundant data.
@quinn @hacks4pancakes The user location data isn't really useful, especially as the users go to locations they normally don't, because game events are happening there.
What *is* interesting are the pictures taken, that should be sufficient to create a fairly complete 3D world map to get very accurate location and orientation(!) information for camera pictures.
Specifically orientation is what delivery robots are struggling with, because GPS doesn't tell them, and magnetometers are imprecise.
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This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes The bizarre thing is that I recall it being stated that it was all for self-driving vehicles and such, back when it came out.
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@quinn
@hacks4pancakes I think it's not that the days doesn't exist, but that the entities that have the tower data set are a) at least somewhat regulated, and b) interested in using a ~monopoly position to charge rent. It's worth it to Niantic to have their own free and unregulated copy, to rent for whatever purposes the industry is currently burning money.@dymaxion @hacks4pancakes it's just a kinda terrible dataset compared to what you'd get from a lot of other apps. i mean, that won't stop them from trying to sell it, but i just don't see them selling it to anyone who is... smart.
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This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes Yeah, we all knew from day 1 this was their goal. Must players have ignored the more obvious scanning tasks though.
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@dymaxion @hacks4pancakes it's just a kinda terrible dataset compared to what you'd get from a lot of other apps. i mean, that won't stop them from trying to sell it, but i just don't see them selling it to anyone who is... smart.
@quinn
Depends on the use case, really
@hacks4pancakes -
This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn’t see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they’ve always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it’s AI.
@hacks4pancakes And they were pretty aggressive about selling that information. They were specifically recruiting sales folks to do it.
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@hacks4pancakes I'm really not sure how the data from Pokemon go gets you much that you don't get from tower data. Sure, it's sensitive data, but it's a subset of various other kinds of sensitive data everyone is already leaking.
It's certainly less data than LE get through telecom portals, or companies buy off providers. Feels like Niantic is playing bad guy to get cash for selling mostly redundant data.
@quinn @hacks4pancakes Folks are leaking that data, yes. But they weren't in a fashion that could be captured and monetized, so that had to happen.
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@dymaxion @hacks4pancakes it's just a kinda terrible dataset compared to what you'd get from a lot of other apps. i mean, that won't stop them from trying to sell it, but i just don't see them selling it to anyone who is... smart.
@quinn
I'm not an expert on Niantic's internal operations but I am an IT guy who has played Ingress since its initial release so I can share some observations.One problem of geo-spatial mapping that Niantic tackled early was location drift in heavily built areas. GPS works great in open areas but less so where satellite signals are impeded or reflected by buildings. Modern smartphones combine WiFi hotspot detection with GPS to improve location accuracy but needs "precise location" to be active which consumes more power. The one other type of mobile app that does this is map/navigation apps, but those are mostly used while stationary or on transport, and rarely while walking. Niantic game mechanics push players to walk around places of interest with the game active so Niantic can collect higher quality location data in places where the data quality tends to be poor.
The next breakthrough was the addition of Augmented Reality (AR) APIs to Android and iOS. Prior to this Niantic had players take photos of landmarks, but with AR-capable phones Niantic added 3D scanning of landmarks. Not as many players do this but it provides richer data and can even map indoor areas.
When I started 3D scanning I thought Niantic was only mapping the landmark, but eventually realised they were also mapping the background to determine where the landmark was in relation to nearby landmarks.
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@quinn
I'm not an expert on Niantic's internal operations but I am an IT guy who has played Ingress since its initial release so I can share some observations.One problem of geo-spatial mapping that Niantic tackled early was location drift in heavily built areas. GPS works great in open areas but less so where satellite signals are impeded or reflected by buildings. Modern smartphones combine WiFi hotspot detection with GPS to improve location accuracy but needs "precise location" to be active which consumes more power. The one other type of mobile app that does this is map/navigation apps, but those are mostly used while stationary or on transport, and rarely while walking. Niantic game mechanics push players to walk around places of interest with the game active so Niantic can collect higher quality location data in places where the data quality tends to be poor.
The next breakthrough was the addition of Augmented Reality (AR) APIs to Android and iOS. Prior to this Niantic had players take photos of landmarks, but with AR-capable phones Niantic added 3D scanning of landmarks. Not as many players do this but it provides richer data and can even map indoor areas.
When I started 3D scanning I thought Niantic was only mapping the landmark, but eventually realised they were also mapping the background to determine where the landmark was in relation to nearby landmarks.
@boomfish @dymaxion @hacks4pancakes afaict basically no one uses the AR. It's crappy and makes the game harder. I'm pretty sure data gathering is why they created AR tasks, but doing them was so buggy that afaict, barely anyone bothers with them. The AR just isn't any fun.
Back to the original point, I just haven't seen anything that suggests it's a competent tool for Evil
️. Again not that I think they don't want to be evil! Just that like most things, evil fails most of the time. -
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