Better consequences for abusers
LukeAllStars-ING
Posts: 4,624 Ambassador
Currently, abusers are whether getting a warning (no consequence) or a 30-90 das Wayfarer Website ban. This ban only affects the usage of the webpage, not in submitting. Obviously, abusers in a high priorisation area dont need to review, and even if they do, that would help the community. The only senseful consequence is to block nominating or editing. Is it possible to finally make warnings/Bans useful?
Post edited by NianticTintino-ING on
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This is the only topic I’ll be voting for.
Anything else is meaningless unless and until Niantic actually fights against the malicious abuse that undermines their credibility, attacks their business model, and discourages legitimate wayfinders.
I know there are plenty of abusers in these forums, so abuse questions often don’t make the cut for AMAs. Regardless, this should be Niantic’s top priority. The fact that it isn’t… well, that’s pretty discouraging.
I agree. It's so disheartening when I spot a fake nomination (stolen photo, etc.), make a well-documented report that's accepted, I get the message that "action has been taken on the X Wayspots and Wayfarers involved", and then I get the exact same fake nomination to review a few days later.
I just want real action to be taken. Niantic has been censoring me lately in terms of some comments and especially criticisms against them being silent regarding abuse. Not even a single peep from the team about the spam nominations in Northern Sydney. There is so much silence over a long period of time, that reviewers are giving up and accepting those spam nominations instead because they are being heavily and extremely spammed.
Luckily, an upvote only voting cant get manipulated by abusers.
They can upvote other questions to push out of the top ones those that they don't like. There are plenty of "silly" questions that don't belong to a wayfarer ama
I suspect this problem will be resolved to a certain degree with the use of Niantic ID and Wayfarer spinning out of the gaming app.
Currently, even though abusers are banned from their Wayfarer logins, their respective game app logins are not banned.
Also, perhaps, but nominations can still be made even if reviews cannot be made.
Therefore, there is almost no damage to the abuser.
However, if logins are unified to Niantic ID, it will interfere with game app logins. And they will not be able to get the results they are looking for.
Also, if all Wayfarer features are spun out of the game app, abusers who are banned from logging in will not be able to nominate.
This will make Wayfarer cleaner overall.
Thats true. However, this should be getting spotted as Spam. Lets see. So far, the question should be in the top positions.
Last AMA I had a question about abuse that was in the top 5 early on, then the last couple of days a number of other questions got more votes. I don’t necessarily think that abusers used multi-accounting muscle to suppress a question (I think it just got buried because there weren’t a lot of comments/discussion) but at the very least, nobody actively involved in system manipulation upvoted it as they’d just as soon the whole concept stay off Niantic’s radar.
Great summary of the whole issue, and that makes me wonder even more why Niantic hasn't reacted yet, even though this topic has been around for a long time now. I really hope it makes it into the AMA.
Why is it spam if people ask different questions and other people like such questions?
Its not until its not upvoting random stuff.
This one isn't going to get outvoted without a fight. 39 upvotes over the next, which is 25. This is important.
This question get asks every AMA (I would know, I generally am the one to ask it, lol) and while it usually gets the support to get answered by Niantic, we continue to never see any improvements. I would like to ask Niantic, why this issue continues to persist, and would request some kind of outline as to the measures that are being taken to reduce the amount of abuse on the platform.
These abusers don't feel held to any rules. When Niantic bans one account, they just create another. Once you know what you're doing in Ingress, L10 doesn't take long to reach. Or they buy a PoGo account that is already 38. Or get a "donation" from someone who quit.
Multi-accounting is much harder to prevent/punish.
If they are getting to the point of having their nominating or even wayfarer access suspended, another nice little piece would be to have all of the nominations of that account that don’t have a resolution should just be rejected. If a successful abuse report doesn’t automatically trigger a review of all that accounts nominations, there is an obvious step being missed.
Getting all nominations rejected happens when you recieve a tier II warning.
I hope tintino will consider merge this question into this thread (or that others will give it some votes), because its at the heart of this issue and I think it deserves to be answered:
Is multi-account abuse treated as a first time offense?
In cases where the same abuses resurface under a different account, is that treated as a first time offense?
That’s why actual game accounts should get hit, not just their Wayfarer access. Malicious abuse should be the most bannable offense within Niantic’s purview, because it has the capacity for the most damage: to other players, to the games themselves, and to Niantic’s business plans and reputation.
Well, lets wait for tomorrows answer. This should be the #1 question.
It's interesting that the community in these forums appears to feel very strongly about it - quite heartening really after some of the coal that pops up in reviewing on a daily basis.
As much as I also want action taken against abusers, the problem I have with this is as someone who is genuinely submitting legitimate stuff I got hit with a Warning for abuse (I submit stuff in new development sometimes and it is hard to get something exactly correct so when it finally gets reviewed 2 years later, it's 'abuse' because it's not exact, I then try to move it to fix it, and it's abuse. Or I just submit a regular object (like a park object) and it's abuse too apparently.). So I'm not sure if we should be doing the whole 'harsher for abusers thing... more like figuring out who is the abuser is and dealing with it correctly'. That said I just had to report 4 waypoints on Wayfairer today for being completely fake and even an entire house lot was filled with nothing but fake private waypoints. So if we are going to go after the abusers, let us please also go after the people who abuse the abuse system as well because they are also part of the problem. I agree with the whole 'we need to do something' but please get the correct people, because if submitting more stuff/waypoints or fixing stuff, just raises the chance of being flagged as an abuser then why would I even try to submit stuff and face a ban on my account? I like this game and I'm trying to submit legit stuff, but fake stuff goes through the system all the time, people like me get punished for fixing things, or just due to how long it takes to review something (stuff can change in 2 years believe it or not!) and all such. Realize that sometimes it's not who you think it is. So if you are flagging fake stuff as abuse, let's have consequences for those people too, and also some benefit of the doubt. I know the abuse is an issue, I deal with it a lot too but please get the right person. Just thought I would add my 2 cents here on this problem because no one else mentioned it.
Yeah, in my area there are lots of PoGO multiaccounters who manipulate what gets accepted or not, i've seen one with at least 6 lvl 40+ accounts (all spoofers lvld up with that handy star shaped modified app) and who knows how many more they have, and that's just 1 of the cheating trio we got in my city. I reported one of them cause I had 6 of his accounts recognized and supposedly they took action on the 6 accounts, but there's no way to make that it is true or for how long they got punished, cause they will get their wayfarer privileges back and will keep doing the same.
The only solution I can see to this is fight fire with fire.
From the April 2022 AMA answer:
We completely agree with you that it is only fair to ban Explorers for abuse on both the in-game submission features and the Wayfarer website. It’s reasonable to think that abusive reviews will also mean abusive nomination behavior. We are actively looking into the trends here and need to complete that analysis before we decide how to implement the solution.
It has been over two months, almost three now and absolutely no development has happened about this? Not even an update? This is worthless! I provided trends when Sydney started getting an influx of Indian and spoofer fakes and abusive edits back in July 2021 and they are STILL commonly being found and actively submitted in the system, particularly when major events such as Community Days or even this month's GoFest occurred.
There are trends which have been going on for months, particularly with Northern Sydney (aka Turramurra) when it escalated in December 2021 by the rampant Street Library abuse and the ongoing spam and when photos were taken from other existing wayspots and submitted in the suburb. Meanwhile, nominations which have been spammed by the abuser over and over and over again for the last six months are yes, still being spammed over and over again even though they were accepted (into the Lightship... of course) and are duped to oblivion.
Considering you wanted to wait until you had 150k appeals processed to kick off the analysis, what sort of trends are you even looking for to even start the analysis for Wayfarer abuse? Until the entire system is all fried and burnt to a crisp? Until your most dedicated Wayfinders are all burnt out? Or when your ambassadors drop off one by one due to your inaction and lack of communication?
I agree with the post above. The only solution for the above is to fight fire with fire. You can change this Niantic. Or maybe we should instead redirect the fire?
I’d like to say I’m tapping my foot and looking at my watch, but at this point I’m looking at my calendar and rolling my eyes.
This inaction is tacit approval of the abusive practices that have plagued this community since well before I became active in it.
Sigh.
All bark but no bite, here is the Wayfarer team!
This maybe not Wayfarer related, but since most of us are disappointed by Niantic to deal with the abusers, let me present this:
The tweet explains well, and so does the replies. Although one reply noted that the support has to follow accounts to open new conversation via DM, but still...
Ain't y'all feeling ashamed, Niantic?