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ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com to Privacy@lemmy.mlEnglish · 2 months ago

Saudi Arabian government company is buying Pokémon go and 100 million players real time location data

www.404media.co

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  • cross-posted to:
  • technology@lemmy.world
  • privacy@lemmy.world
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Saudi Arabian government company is buying Pokémon go and 100 million players real time location data

www.404media.co

ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com to Privacy@lemmy.mlEnglish · 2 months ago
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45
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  • cross-posted to:
  • technology@lemmy.world
  • privacy@lemmy.world
Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data
www.404media.co
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A company owned by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund just bought the most popular AR video game of all time.
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  • metalslug53@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    F

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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    2 months ago

    Pikmin Bloom too

    Booooo. That sucks.

    I was never into Pokemon before this app but this game was fun just finding new discoveries even in my own city.

    • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Street Complete lets you walk around and answer questions that go to OSM

    • pipariturbiini@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Luckily geocaching is still a thing!

      • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Too bad it is $30/year for the app to work.

        • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          Geocaching isn’t limited to a single app… Go find a geocaching website and punch the coords into whatever mapping app you use.

          • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            I thought it was all through groundspeak.

            • Zoop@beehaw.org
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              2 months ago

              Nope! Geocaching was a thing long before phone apps were a thing.

              • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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                2 months ago

                I used to geocache back when i had to get coordinates from geocaching.com and put them into my Garmin handheld gps. But I had gone looking for a cache my dad found on accident while camping and to view it on their website we had to have premium. Same thing with almost all of the caches around my town and surrounding county.

                Are there sites other than groundspeak’s geocaching.com? I searched DDG last night and everything was an article about geocaching and lead back to geocaching.com or was geocaching.com.

                I have considered looking into letterboxing, a friend used to do that while i geocached, but I never did it.

            • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 months ago

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching

              Started officially in 2000, coinciding (but not by coincidence) with a more-accurate GPS network. Long before what would now be considered “smart” devices (Palm Pilot, Handspring Visor, etc) had any sort of GPS abilities. You had to have, or know someone who owned, a handheld GPS device.

      • deus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Now that sounds like the perfect replacement for Pokémon Go for me, which means it’s an app I’ll install as a way to motivate me to go walk outside and then feel guilty because I just don’t.

  • root@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s been fun. Once this is official I guess it’s over for me.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      It was a rip off from the start…

      I must confess, I was into it as well, but the game design was it to be so omnipresent that it hindered me on other tasks, so that I had to stop. I can’t play this game casually 😆 either all in or nothing, lol

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    First they came for my event pikachus, then they came for my shiny legendaries…

  • NGC2346@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Jokes on them i’ve been cheating on this game with my location as some random places for a decade and lot of people have been doing this too.

  • quickenparalysespunk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    OK so instead of tracking journalists with NSO spyware and murdering them,

    they won’t even have to install NSO anymore.

    prepare to see news reports of many more mysterious murders, and obvious assassinations.

    • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      All shinnies spawn at their embassy :sob emoji:

    • misteloct@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Next up, Saudi Arabia buys the Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel smartphone lines. Pokemon Go comes installed in the system partition for free with 1000 free PokeCoins, how generous!

      • _____@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        and then absolutely everyone I talk to will do usual ‘oh it’s not that bad , you’re over reacting’ with the additional “I don’t use it but I still have it installed”

        • misteloct@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          My mom: “hey honey how do I uninstall this Pokeman Go app? The uninstall button is greyed out. It’s using 20% of my storage and battery”

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 months ago

    lol this is a crazy

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I don’t see as any worse, necessarily. For all I know, Saudi Arabia was previously buying the data from Niantic piecemeal.

    Forbes, 2016: How Niantic Is Profiting Off Tracking Where You Go While Playing ‘Pokémon GO’

    • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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      2 months ago

      While true, I felt (if misguided) more comfortable with my data under California data protection laws than Saudi Arabia.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, but we can’t have real data privacy laws in the US. Won’t you think of the shareholders?

        They’ve gotten rich off of spying on you wholesale and selling the information to anybody with cash.

        It would be rude and un-American to ask them to stop profiting off of morally bankrupt practices. Plus, they’d just say no and they own the government too.

      • comfortablydumb@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        As a European, I never feel comfortable with my data under any US state’s data protection laws.

  • lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)@feddit.nl
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    2 months ago

    Business ethics? Meh, just profits, just profits.

    • devfuuu@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Always has been, and nothing will continue to be done about it.

    • irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      But it’s “just business”. You can’t blame them. That’s the get out of jail free card, often literally.

      /s

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      2 months ago

      Unregulated Capitalism.

  • Gloria@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    • kozy138@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Too much detail. Needs more jpg

      • Coldmoon@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        doiliooklikeiknowwhatajpegis.gif

        • Krackalot@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          https://open.spotify.com/track/2XbVMB4FyF77Vgy7Zulnle

  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 days ago

    deleted by creator

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Saudi Arabia really likes to invest in dead tech.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      They don’t care about the tech, they care about the data.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        You give them too much credit on this one. This decision was likely spearheaded by some nepo appointment who is out to diversify in the worst way. When your send cousin Johnny to college in the West, you’re still not getting the best and brightest when he comes back. Whole structure of their investment fund is graft and bad decisions.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      they need to branch out from thier dying, single industry, oil. they have been lapping up sports teams all over. turns out the desert is not a good place to live with little to no natural resources outside of oil. also being desert theres little to no arable land.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Dead tech so many people play Pokemon go.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Sure but they’re just buying a licensed property with a declining player base and leaving Niantic with the base tech and the drive to innovate. It’s a dead end road where they’re buying the “secure” part of the company but it’s actually incredibly high risk because of how licensing agreements work. That’s why I call it dead tech. They’re not going to build anything out of it. It’ll just decline. Perhaps quite catastrophically at that.

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Waiting for them to further push monetization schemes. I’ll bet on stat boosters and shiny rate enhancers for $$.

  • CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I can’t believe Saudi Arabia are nationalising Pokemon Go when the UK won’t even nationalise regional water monopolies. Honestly these things were never great for privacy and given the state of things I’m not sure I’m more concerned about a Saudi entity tracking me than a US one.

    Not good news for gay Pokemon fans in that country though.

    • Yeather@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      In the end all that changes is a Saudi company on NSA checks instead of a US one.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Gotta catch them all!

  • ouch@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Any source that is readable without an account?

    • synestia@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      https://archive.is/20250312183235/https://www.404media.co/saudi-arabia-buys-pokemon-go-and-probably-all-of-your-location-data/

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