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Niantic announces “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

(nianticlabs.com)
383 points bookstore-romeo | 4 comments | 19 Nov 24 20:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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relyks ◴[20 Nov 24 22:26 UTC] No.42198768[source]▶
This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's not very convenient to take a video around the object or location in question. If they release the model and weights, though, I will feel I contributed to the greater good.
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1. thephyber ◴[21 Nov 24 01:46 UTC] No.42200216[source]▶
All companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but…

If you enjoy the game, play the game. Don’t boycott/withhold because they figured out an additional use for data that didn’t previously exist.

Another way of viewing this: GoogleMaps is incredibly high quality mapping software with lots of extra features. It is mostly free (for the end user). If no one uses it, Google doesn’t collect the data and nobody can benefit from the analysis of the data (eg. Traffic and ETA on Google Maps)

There’s no reason to hold out for a company to pay you for your geolocation data because none of them offer that service.

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2. eru ◴[21 Nov 24 03:30 UTC] No.42200830[source]▶
> All companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but…

I'm fairly sure, if you read the terms-and-conditions, it probably said that the company owns this data and can do what they want with it.

> There’s no reason to hold out for a company to pay you for your geolocation data because none of them offer that service.

Well, it can make perfect sense (to some people) to hold out forever in that case.

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3. __MatrixMan__ ◴[21 Nov 24 04:12 UTC] No.42201031[source]▶
> If you enjoy the game, play the game

I wish it were that simple but I think it's reasonable to hesitate. We don't know what these models are going to be used for. If by playing you're unwittingly letting something powerful fall into the wrong hands, maybe play something else.

(Generally speaking. I'm not trying to throw stones at Niantic specifically here.)

4. oneeyedpigeon ◴[21 Nov 24 08:38 UTC] No.42202300[source]▶
> terms-and-conditions

I would argue that's being legally truthful, but not practically truthful. The company knows there are ways they can ensure their consumers are aware of the truth. And they know that burying it in Ts and Cs isn't one of them.