More wayspot(s) with third-party photos / screenshots of Google Street View

Title of the Wayspot: Taman Permainan Jalan Rusa 11

Location: Somewhere around 1.4916576,103.9151764

City: Pasir Gudang, Johor

Country: Malaysia

Screenshot of the Rejection Email: N/A (I reported this through the Wayfarer form and nobody responds to those)

Image of currently live wayspot:

Note that this image has a clearly doctored part:

That part is where the Google watermark appears in the Street View that the submitter screenshotted and used as a supporting photo (I mentioned this when I reported the nomination but it got through Wayfarer anyway):

Street View:

Zoom in on the same spot that is poorly photoshopped in the wayspot photo...

Street View link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.4916576,103.9151764,3a,71y,116.65h,77.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUwrDqgbMJtSLrZeXePznbQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192


Additional information:

This is (probably) not the only submission they're making.

Here's another submission from the same person(?) in the same area:

Their image source, this time taken off a photo instead of just screenshotting Street View:

Tagged:

Comments

  • Yacatect-INGYacatect-ING Posts: 163 ✭✭✭

    At least one more has passed through Wayfarer already. You can tell the below "photo" is a screenshot because the image quality is usually strangely low, the submission and supporting "photos" are just alternate crops of the same photo, and the background objects, debris, shadows match exactly, down to the exact positions of the leaves on the plants and coconuts on the tree.

    First screenshot is of the now-live waypoint, others are from Wayfarer before it went live.


  • Hello! We have reviewed the report and have taken action on the Wayspots and the Wayfinders in accordance with our policies. While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO, or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account.

    Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.

  • Yacatect-INGYacatect-ING Posts: 163 ✭✭✭

    I don't know if any new ones have passed through Wayfarer yet but there's at least one account in this area still submitting Street View screenshots as submission images and also trying to influence reviewers by asking them to 5* for free agreements.

    Wayfarer screenshot:


    Maps location: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.5049511,103.9253547,3a,53.5y,254.07h,69.31t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spD1v7hVHKrghu_dmx1ys4w!2e0!5s20140301T000000!7i13312!8i6656

    Maps screenshot (March 2014 version of SV):


    Note how the exact same pieces of trash are in the submission "'photo" and Street View, in the exact same positions.

  • Yacatect-INGYacatect-ING Posts: 163 ✭✭✭

    Okay, I've seen now that there ARE some that have passed through Wayfarer. One of them is even featured as a showcase! @NianticGiffard @NianticVK Can you please look into this again?


    Featured Wayspot name: Taman Permainan Taman Mawar Fasa 5

    Featured Street View screenshot:

    Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.4668225,103.8946883,3a,52.6y,99.36h,79.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s91ZTITK3qC8W1P7cgMxfDw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    Maps image:

    Notice how the positions of the leaves, the clouds, shadows, etc are all exactly the same. The Wayspot image is also of rather poor quality as they are using a crop of a zoomed-in Street View screenshot.


    Other live Wayspots:

    #1 Wayspot name: Taman Permainan Jalan Delima 13

    Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.5076338,103.9325641,3a,18.4y,291.95h,88.65t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sC-gTU0_aqWOuyD7bikMHyw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    Current Wayspot image:

    Maps image:

    The Wayspot image is a darkened screenshot from this Street View.

    #2 Wayspot name: Taman Permainan Persiaran Cahaya Masai

    Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.5057866,103.9270497,3a,45.3y,188.43h,89.61t,358.9r/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sr0QhxthDFTOu-68kHAUM5g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    Current Wayspot image:

    Maps image:

    #3 Wayspot name: Gazebo Jalan Berlian

    Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.5057116,103.9264077,3a,75y,186.34h,91.64t,359.86r/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYhEIluhg2g2fwBB555nNNA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    Current Wayspot image:

    Maps image:

    This one is particularly obvious if you zoom in, as the exact same person is sitting on the swing in the background of both the Street View and wayspot image.

    Bonus: One more submission that's not live yet, but considering that some others have passed in this neighbourhood, this one might go up too so I'm just going to post it here so I don't have to report it again later.

    Submission image:

    Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.5075304,103.9305561,3a,75.3y,199.35h,92.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAS5Eo9nxbbWQMxOnFFxl2Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    Maps image:

    Notice the same cars parked right in front of the building (near the windows), same clouds, same flag positions? They just messed with the colours/darkness to disguise it. Note that the supporting statement is also a rather weak attempt to influence reviewers.

  • patsufredo-PGOpatsufredo-PGO Posts: 4,214 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Wait..., so did it mean I can report lots of Wayspots using screenshots from Google Street View as main photo?

  • exculcator-INGexculcator-ING Posts: 67 ✭✭✭

    I hope not. I am getting more and more rejections these days of my submissions as using "3rd party" photos - when they are not. Sure, you can find my photos on Google if you look for them - because I posted them there!

    Frankly, I am very suspicious of people looking for supposed "screen shots" and claiming them as such. It is one thing to be suspicious of a nomination; it is another to go on a witch hunt of actual waypoints, not least because the Streetview stuff may have been uploaded by the waypoint submitter.

    I do that all the time (I am level 8 with Google, which means my edits go live on Google Maps almost instantly). It's bad enough when my nominations get wrongly rejected for "3rd party" reasons; I would *hate* my Ingress portals to be taken down because people like you saw the same images used on Google and in Ingress and reported them.

  • Firecloud-PGOFirecloud-PGO Posts: 55 ✭✭

    Same here, I'm also a Google Contributor and while I'm at a park or a place where I notice the "venue" on Maps doesn't have photos or the photos are out of date I will submit photos there as well. So I know of a few parks for example in my local neighbourhood where the Maps photo and the POI photo for Wayfarer will be almost identical for this reason.

  • Yacatect-INGYacatect-ING Posts: 163 ✭✭✭

    Don't worry, I actually did consider those possibilities.

    These are low-quality screenshots that often have some kind of image editing (usually darkening or lightening) to obfuscate them, often use older Street View versions to prevent people noticing as SV defaults to the newest capture when reviewing, AND these are SV locations credited to Google. AFAIK solid-line Street View images are from Google cars, user-contributed submissions don't have that "(c) Google" and have a different "may be subject to copyright" message instead and are marked as dotted lines on SV (or circles for individual photospheres), and photospheres are credited to the uploader's Google account.

    And for the third-party photos in my other report, I also considered the possibility that they might have been uploaded by the submitter. However, there were a bunch of submissions from the same area at the same time with other similar characteristics, all using Google photos credited to various different people from different dates, even using photos credited to different people from different years within the same submission (submission photo and supporting photo have different credits), some photos credited to websites, AND they're edited to obfuscate the source, so I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Your existing wayspots are probably safe since even if someone did report them because of your Google photos, Niantic could easily check and see that they're all credited to the same person and ask the submitter (aka you) for information. And even if Niantic did a dumb and didn't ask you, you could also appeal and provide proof that you own the photos to get them reinstated.

    The irony is that the cheaters' efforts to obfuscate the photos are what made them noticeable in the first place. If they had just submitted the original high-quality photos as-is, it would never have even occurred to me to check. Instead, these submissions often use low-resolution, highly-cropped, and darkened, lightened, or slightly colour-shifted versions. There's often a weirdness to the submissions that seem immediately off. And I'm guessing it's thanks to these cheaters that people are scrutinising your submissions more closely too, because I never bothered checking Google photos before either until these odd submissions started coming up in my queue.

    And this is, in fact, why I report them. They waste my time, the time of other reviewers, and the time of other submitters. They clog up the queue and take up spots that could've gone to other legitimate submissions, they make me have to spend extra time scrutinising nominations when I used to be able to just take a quick glance at an eligible submission and vote fast, and they make other reviewers less trusting and less willing to take a submitter's word on the information provided (which has probably gotten some of my own submissions rejected as well, so I can understand your frustration there).

    I don't go on witch hunts and I don't care enough to check random existing wayspots for copyrighted images. Unless they're obviously watermarked or something, I doubt anyone else cares either, because reporting stuff is a pain and not worth the effort unless there's a lot of stuff to report and/or a lot of clear evidence. All this started from me being "suspicious of a nomination" but just writing it off as someone having a lousy camera, then getting a whole bunch more of these suspicious nominations, noticing the pattern, and reporting them with the examples of some live wayspots as extra evidence of said pattern.

    Anyways, I'm just reporting the info I have. It's Niantic's job to investigate, and they can just ask the submitters for info if they want to. If Niantic is actually able to confirm all these are legit, or if they conclude that Street View screenshots are fine, they can just respond and say so.

    Yes, actually, because the explanation of "ineligible photo" in the rejection criteria document includes "copyrighted material or watermarks, including screenshots of someone else’s photo". AFAIK you're technically allowed to submit screenshots of your own photos, so a screenshot from your own photosphere would technically be allowed, but that would be weird and would probably get rejected so it's better not to waste a submission and use a normal photo instead.

    Funnily enough, I've seen people submit photos of a Street View image open on their laptop / computer / TV screen, which is technically not a screenshot of someone else's photo, because it's a photo of someone else's photo.

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