Detecting Fakes by reverse image search
iFrankmans-ING
Posts: 192 Ambassador
I happened to stumble on an area with fakes while doing wayfarer.
All pictures where taking from different websites.
When submitting wayspots we have to provide original pictures, so this made me wonder why would they not do reverse image search and flag samples that are 100% identical to images found on the web?
As this is not the first area that I came across filled with fakes based of pictures from online sources (or different wayspots).
It would help out the reviewing process and eliminate the cheaters quickly.
EDIT: Not really important where the fakes were located, they have been taken care off.
Comments
The same company that has a bug/feature on its reviewing page for the last six months.
Is indifferent to doing a simple task like updating a webpage with criteria or casting Deletrius on a banner.
Happily removes/moves poi without any thought making the heads of Ingress players explode.
Answers forum questions never unless you are really lucky and get drawn in the Answer A Question From Six Months Ago office lotto.
Dumps poi that are the antithesis of everything that they ask the community to consider when reviewing. Then asks the same same community to fix it for them.
I could go on....
I was trying to be constructive here, thanks.
It's a great idea. Let's see what the people in charge who could implement the constructive ideas the community have think about it.
Niantic is unable to check their own images to prevent dupes and fakes. Asking them to use third party services for that is a leap of faith.
I had a nomination pop up in my reviews that was for a park in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
The picture was of a park in Finland. From Finlands tourism website.
Fun times
Unfortunately we are likely not the only ones with such experiences..
well yes that would be great if they would check them, as this happens so often
It's a great idea, I love it. Don't get me wrong. However, implementing this would be pretty far off considering the road map for 2023 is already in place.
I suspect they won't bother and leave it up to the reviewers to catch these things. Stranger things have happened and we can hope.
Oh yes no expectations just throwing the idea over the fence😁
YES! I have seen so many.
They could also detect a lot of fakes by just checking images against their existing database. I've had dozens removed where the photo was stolen/reused from another wayspot.
Resources/Cost is probably as much an issue as getting one of their coders to implement it. Usually reverse image searches are free for users but commercial users such a company need to pay to use them. Considering how many submissions, it's quite a number of comparisons a day that need doing.
Where images are 100% identical, they will have the same hash, so easy to spot but only one pixel needs changing to game that system.
AI based matches (rather than hash) will cause so many false positives. Google and Tineye etc will show very similar images and often with landmarks, people take pictures from the same spot and get similar looking pictures, so these would likely get flagged as being a copy.
It's not as straight forward as you think...
That’s why you don’t want to automate it all but flag them for internal review
You are correct. It should be standard on every nomination, wouldn’t be difficult to implement, and would reduce cheating.
Niantic probably won’t do it.
Good idea.
Implementing this will definitely reduce cheating.
And similarly, there will be less arbitrary titling and individual nomination of mass-produced products.
Ah indeed didn't think about mass-produced ones, like logos etc, which are all over the internet of course.
I've seen sculptures from New York and Barcelona submitted in rural Slovakia. Super easy to report these.
The thing is - it would probably also flag things that are eligible but similar by nature. Playground equipment is, for example, usually also mass-produced, but playgrounds are still very much eligible. Tennis courts look pretty much identical everywhere in the world (well, the ones with the same surface, at least). Also, religious symbols are usually very similar too: crosses, Marian columns, calvaries, roadside chapels etc. are all across Europe and they are perfectly eligible, but they often also look very, very similar to each other.
This is one of those ideas that sounds great at first but the devil is in the details.
well obviously the details are very important. But the things you mention would still have different backgrounds etc. Where as I propose really stolen images, which are almost a one on one match. Tools have evolved and are capable of making such distinctions.
This is a case where the problem doesn't have to be completely solved in order for the situation to be improved. A solution that auto-rejected even a third of fakes submitted and had a low false-positive rate would be a significant improvement to the current situation.
Auto-detecting watermarks would also be good, and again it doesn't have to have a 100% success rate.
You're right, actually stolen images (perfect matches) could be filtered out this way. My worry is that people would soon find out that changing the picture somewhat (cropping, some color manipulation etc.) could avoid this. But you're right, your proposal is better than having nothing.
Of course it will not be perfect, but provides Niantic tools to act sooner on fakes, whereas currently they grow to tens/hundreds in an area before any action on the wayfinder is taken. Just promoting more and more cheating.
And obviously Niantic should not communicate that they use such a tool, to make cheaters unnecessarily informed. And by having the flagged entries resolved by Niantic employees they can just appear to have been revealed in the review process.
Altho a scan for watermarks should be easy enough, before the nomination is even submitted.
Then, new nominations should wait at least a day to go into voting, so the nominator can edit the text.
During that day, Niantic could scan its pictures. IOW: the image reverse search doesn't have to be done during the nomination itself and crash the app.
I'm surprised Niantic hasn't been sued yet for copyright infringement. That might be the only thing that motivates them in this situation.
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
It definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..
Are you sure that it definitely should not be done at the time of nomination, which will just give away that that was the reason..?
Seems like the Vanilla outage duplicated your comment a couple times lmao
Great timing of that outage, with my posting, that is a little too many lol.
Well they could of course not state that it is that, but people will find out that the image was the thing blocking the nomination by just trial-and-error right?
Just like the banned words filter that blocks certain words (which is rather annoying if you are submitting in a different language than English, but that is a side-track).
I think that it's perfectly OK for "Hey, you have a watermark on your photo" to be presented to the user when they submit something. They're probably standing right there and they can easily turn off watermarking on their phone's camera and take a new photo. That would improve the workflow for the person submitting it since they wouldn't have to get the rejection and go back, and it would reduce the burden on the review submission because the candidate would only have to be reviewed once rather than get rejected for the watermark and submitted again. Checking for faces and license plates and warning ("This seems to have a (recognizable face/legible license plate) in the photo, which would cause your candidate to be rejected. Please confirm that your main photo does not contain these elements, or retake the photo.") would also be useful.
Doing this in-app may not be feasible, though, because that would require a lot of detection logic to be built into the clients. If Niantic was able to implement this then it should be a warning rather than an automatic rejection because there may be false positives, such as a mural with a realistic-looking face.