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.
Anyone that groups individuals with their government is a bigot advertising their bigotry.
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.
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.
Lol everyone owns your data except for you
“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
I guess I’m glad I had a windows phone during the Pokémon go craze
Saudi Arabia? I remember about 10 or so years ago that Saudi Arabia had banned Pokemon because “it promotes materialism”.
What changed?
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.
Money.
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.
deleted by creator
Ah yes… “freedom” under capitalism means being owned by some disgusting oil tyrant.
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
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.
First sports washing and now game washing.
Removed by mod
Time to never use any of their products again
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.
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.
Yet another good thing ruined by the Saudi government. Why can’t we have nice things? :(
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.
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…
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.
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.
With a bit of luck they still have a GDPR deletion process in place.
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 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.
