[abroszka33]

I like Pokemon Go and play almost every day. I did this scan one time and then stopped. The rewards are not worth the hassle. I don't think many players are doing it. It's just very weird to stand somewhere and scan an object.

I also wouldn't say 'unknowingly trained', it's pretty obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.

[organsnyder]

My son showed me how he does these quests: he points the phone at the floor and just wiggles it back and forth.

[snapetom]

My friend did this. He always took pictures of his feet. He was banned from submitting scans and Wayfarer for a few years. He just got access back.

We joke that maybe PoGo didn't get any benefit from his data, but someone did.

[abroszka33]

Haha :D Good tip, I will try that too.

[deadbabe]

Your son is a bad data point.

[organsnyder]

Aww... shucks. I'm such a proud father.

[Supermancho]

Bad for some goals, good for others.

[FrustratedMonky]

exactly. that is why i doubt they will get actual navigable information out of it.

[pohl]

To maintain that take, wouldn't you need to offer a plausible way that Niantic managed to train their Visual Positioning System using that data if the data was all bad?

[FrustratedMonky]

I guess we don't know the terms of the deal, as far as how much they paid? So maybe they didn't pay much, so whatever data they could extract was ok for the cost.

The other point from article. I took this as experimental, so maybe we'll find out later that they really couldn't get much usable data.

[mikae1]

> I don't think many players are doing it.

Do we have to think? Apparently they amassed 30B images. :)

[momoschili]

30B images isn't that much in the context of Pokemon Go playerbase of ~50 million (conservative estimate based on users today). That's about 600 images per person, in a game that has been out since 2016... that's pretty low adoption as the previous user said. I don't think the quest has been out since 2016, but considering a large fraction of users are basically daily users, it's still quite a small number of images.

[jurgenburgen]

600 images per person is a huge amount, especially considering some amount of people are like the GP and don’t do it. The active picture takers would be taking _more_ than 600 images.

[momoschili]

30B images over the course of 6 years by a few million players. In a game that runs daily quests like this and weekly quests can easily be accounted for by a small fraction of users. I don't know how much you played Pokemon Go, but when the AR scanning tasks were introduced, most players didn't really want to do them, which resulted in the tasks be segregated from Field Research (since they were taking up a valuable spot)

This was GP's original point - it doesn't take the majority of people playing Pokemon Go to do it in order for them to get 30B images, especially since each scan was like multiple images - you look like a dork doing the scan

[abroszka33]

But this is images. I submitted it one time and I'm pretty sure that was hundreds of images. You basically walk around the POI and it takes a LOT of images of the POI. 600 scans / player would be insane.

[skeledrew]

That 30B could just be the useful set after cleanup.

[Larrikin]

I used to just record the ground and even leave out my feet, but apparently they detect and ban people who do this too often now. The data was always going somewhere shady, but after the sale it is even worse so I just stopped completely. At best you get a poffin or rare candy and that absolutely is not worth it.

[DennisP]

> obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.

But most people probably assumed the purpose was to improve the game, not to train delivery robots.

Or whatever else they end up doing with the data. If, as the article suggests, this ends up adding to the surveillance state by making geolocation of photos more accurate, then I really don't think that's what the players had in mind.

[abroszka33]

I'm pretty sure that by now almost everybody know that anything you put online is monetised. I'm also 100% sure they sell my location data as well. I just don't care. Not my responsibility to stop it.

[ohyoutravel]

Same, I do it once in a great while. Give me a rare candy or rare candy XL per scan and you’ll find me jumping all over the neighborhood!

[snapetom]

I'd imagine it's not just the research quests, but it's submissions for new stops, too.