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

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.

> I feel … I have been tricked

Everything “free” coming from a company means they’ve found a way to monetise you in some way. The big long ToS we all casually accept without reading says so too.

Other random examples which appear free but aren’t: using a search engine, using the browser that comes with your phone, instagram, YouTube… etc.

It’s not always about data collection, sometimes it’s platform lock-in, or something else but there is always a side of it that makes sense for their profit margin.

Hiding shady or unexpected stuff in the TOS is illegal in the EU and other countries for example. So just because some companies behave amoral, that doesn’t mean we just have to accept hundreds of pages of legalese being able to dictate us.

I don’t think there is something amoral here. Niantic explicitly sends players to take videos of places for rewards. It’s not like it’s done in a sneaky way.

Being somehow surprised they actually plan to do things with the data they have you gather is a bit weird.

No, it isn't. Stop normalizing this behavior. There was no consent. You expect that you are playing a game, not working for them for free.

Of course there was consent. There is even an explicit EULA listing in plain writing that you are actually collecting data for them that people have to agree to before playing.

That people suddenly wake up to the fact that they were dumb for providing labour for worthless virtual gifts doesn't magically allow them to claim it was abuse post-fact.

If people don’t read or understand the EULA, then it violates the spirit of the legislation (not to mention it’s plain shady). Consent must be voluntary (opt-in) and informed.

If you don’t read what you sign, it’s not uninformed consent. It’s you being an idiot.

You can spin this both ways. So if I include a 12,000 page EULA with my product, you're the idiot if page 8,172 includes a footnote that allows me to sell your data, but uses terms defined a few thousand pages earlier, so you actually have to read all of it?

You can play these shenanigans with businesses, but I for one am happy such behaviour is illegal here when selling to consumers.