What's the best way to report a large set of fakes these days?
Hosette-ING
Posts: 3,470 ✭✭✭✭✭
While reviewing I came across two obvious (to me, because I'm familiar with the area) fakes in a park. This caused me to look at the other wayspots in that park and identify that many (and probably nearly all) of the existing wayspots are also fake. For some of them the wayspot photos are stolen from other wayspots, including one that is around 3000km away. For others I have not identified the source but it is very unlikely that they are there. This is a city where I have spotted dozens of fake wayspots before, most of which are removed. The modus operandi was the same in that case, which suggests it's the same person or people.
The park is not super close to me, but it's close enough that I could go there and confirm the status of each and every one, and take photos to confirm the status as fakes.
What is the best way to bulk-report a few dozen fake wayspots plus two fake submissions, and provide supporting evidence?
Comments
The one that I rejected recently as a fake is now a portal. The submitter is clever enough to drop the pins in areas where there is tree cover so that reviewers can't see that they aren't there.
@NianticAaron @NianticTintino Is there a way to bulk-report? I suppose I could post them all on the forum like I did last time but it seems like there should be a better way.
I've had success recently via 2 different methods.
In one case, a friend of mine found a town in which nearly half the wayspots were faked. I made a series of forum posts and follow up comments such as this one to report them all: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/32526/overwhelming-number-of-fake-wayspot-in-stephenville-newfoundland#latest
In another case, I made a spreadsheet containing a long list of wayspots in need of retirement and had another friend of mine DM it to a Niantic person on this forum.
Beyond that there's no good way to do it in bulk that i'm aware of.
I've had the same issue and all my efforts via support failed. Each day more and more fakes were in my review queue, all of them hidden under trees but on streetview you were able to see the fakes. It got better when I've opened a thread in here with and tagged nia-employees. Some of the hundreds of fake wayspots got removed and for a while there have been no new submissions from that town but we're back where we've started.
Furthermore I get this from Pokémon user in a different town now. This guy isn't trying to hide the cheating. Loads of stolen nature signs from areas far away with trees on the picture but no trees on satellite/streetview. What's even more frustrating is that the user is only using a set of pictures and my fellow reviewers already accepted many duplicates.
My conclusion is that using the report-system isn't working at all and just a waste of time. It helps a bit if you can ping a moderator here and collect a few ticket numbers to make it easier to understand.
I recently found a cluster of 10+ fake Wayspots in an area. I reported via support and all were removed about two days later.
Satellite for the area was old and unhelpful, but Streetview had been fairly recently updated, so I provided support with a couple of screenshots showing obvious residential housing where things like a skate park, a playground, etc were supposed to be. I also sent a screenshot from Google Maps showing the real address of a clearly one-of-a-kind memorial located across the city, which corresponded to one of the fake Wayspots.
@Purptacular-PGO Did you have an individual support chat for each one, or all in one fell swoop? I have dozens to deal with.
@Hosette-ING I just had one support chat for the cluster. I think I listed details for three of the Wayspots in the area that were clearly fake, then mentioned that most of the other Wayspots nearby appeared to be also fake. Everything disappeared at once, so I assume all had been submitted by the same account and that support basically wiped all of the Wayspots that account had created.