Well, things would be different if Niantic are able to do that in the start. But again, Niantic didn't aware if many players would abuse location edits, and hence Niantic took such 'desperate' action to set limitation on location edits.
It is because Niantic didn't expect players to exploit and cheat with Wayspot location to such a brazen extreme to create these large clusters of Pokestops. In some respects Niantic is naive to think that those who would be motivated to exploit and cheat would be such a low number that they would be statistically insignificant.
You are doing a really good job! Hopefully Niantic will take a good look at this!
I have someone in my friends list who sends me gifts from their place of residence and then again from Zaragoza in Spain. I've already reported it to support, but it seems to be continuing. Let's see how he and all the other cheaters will like it when Niantic takes action!
Actually, I would prefer the Niantic to shut down everything for a day and then recalculate the cells worldwide, then justice prevails and then only fakes and spoofers are the problem, but the abuse regarding the cells would be contained.
What has also been a thorn in my side for a long time are the countless likes that are placed on wayspots to create gyms. The likes would have to be reset once. For example, we have playgrounds that are badly photographed with 30 likes on a picture, we don't have that many active agents here. Unfortunately, a new and better picture no longer has a chance. But well, that's another topic.
The question is: Why doesn't Niantic do anything by their own until someone reports these abuses?
They have the whole database, they can run queries to check the spacing between wayspots, density rules in cells, who did nominate and who did send location edits.
They have all the data but it seems that they relay on mere players to report the issues.
Nadie se esperaba que abusaran del sistema de está forma, en todo el mundo muchas comunidades le dan el buen visto a el abuso lo cual ya es un problema, yo creo que la mejor solución es que se sigan reportando estos lugares creados con abuso del sistema para que las personas vean que el abuso no lleva a nada, ahora están saliendo a la luz muchos más lugares así, creados con abuso del sistema
Many of those abuse locations have been known for a long time and Niantic hasn't done anything about them until specifically reported. If they wanted to clear their games from cheaters, it should be quite easy to find out those that stayed in those spots (or "walking" a path around them) for a long time and then send a strike to them.
It's funny to see many spoofers' reactions after Zaragoza has been 'destroyed' by Niantic. Some were posting more alternative hotspots in Twitter (which are also prone to be reported, and I assume all of them already covered here by @TheFarix-PGO ), while few were telling others not to share more hotspots' coordinate (which are useless now, unless there are still many hotspots undiscovered that should be anticipated by Niantic). One notable reaction I found just now:
They have proved AMA after AMA that they are perfectly capable of dodging the questions that they don't want to reply or to rephrase and answer them in such a vague way that it's totally useless.
True. And after 3.1 they proved they don't mind going back and deleting previous responses and that they don't really care about the importance we've placed on the correspondence.
Theres no point wasting time on it on an ama as its already against the rules it not possible to do now in the game. This happened when the game was first released
What I meant was not to delete the waypoints (they’re probably legitimate in Ingress and other stuff Niantic might use them for) but remove the stops in PoGo.
When a new portal appears in Ingress, an algorithm determines whether it can go into PoGo. Surely the same algorithm can be retrospectively applied to take them out again if, as per the photos above, people have been clearly abusing the system. This way, there is no requirement for them to be told, it will automatically happen.
The people that have created such abuses quickly told everyone to reject any location edit (or any kind of edit) as soon as the first report of the new system that enforces the cell rules.
Well, it looks like Niantic reversed course and restored the Pokestops at Zaragoza. I guess blatant exploitation and abuse is ok so long as Niantic makes a profit. I guess the spoofers and cheaters won this round.
Give that this topic was originally deleted and only restored when I raised a stink about it, I wonder if there is some Niantic employee who is running interference on this abuse. @NianticCasey-ING Can you give any insight as to why those stops that clearly violate the spacing algorithm were restored?
Niantic doesn't care about large scale abuse. Best I ever got for an answer was the usual copy and paste stuff. Threads in the general section just get ignored.
Sometimes fakers do get a warning though ... and then they continue faking
Tu mismo lo dijiste, ganaron una batalla pero no la guerra hay que seguir reportando estos lugares creados con abuso hasta que el abuso deje de existir, hay que seguir en la lucha contra el abuso
It's Niantic we're talking about here (apologies for bagging them on their official forum but I've been on the end of plenty of Nia incompetence), I also wouldn't be surprised if the initial deletion of this thread was caught in auto-mod.
Keep it up though, the integrity of the Wayfarer system is a worthy fight.
Comments
Well, things would be different if Niantic are able to do that in the start. But again, Niantic didn't aware if many players would abuse location edits, and hence Niantic took such 'desperate' action to set limitation on location edits.
these fake poi destroys the portal network. is sad
It is because Niantic didn't expect players to exploit and cheat with Wayspot location to such a brazen extreme to create these large clusters of Pokestops. In some respects Niantic is naive to think that those who would be motivated to exploit and cheat would be such a low number that they would be statistically insignificant.
You are doing a really good job! Hopefully Niantic will take a good look at this!
I have someone in my friends list who sends me gifts from their place of residence and then again from Zaragoza in Spain. I've already reported it to support, but it seems to be continuing. Let's see how he and all the other cheaters will like it when Niantic takes action!
Actually, I would prefer the Niantic to shut down everything for a day and then recalculate the cells worldwide, then justice prevails and then only fakes and spoofers are the problem, but the abuse regarding the cells would be contained.
What has also been a thorn in my side for a long time are the countless likes that are placed on wayspots to create gyms. The likes would have to be reset once. For example, we have playgrounds that are badly photographed with 30 likes on a picture, we don't have that many active agents here. Unfortunately, a new and better picture no longer has a chance. But well, that's another topic.
Please keep it up. You and Niantic do a good job.
Why does it need to be reported as abuse? Surely Niantic can just run the spacing algorithm against the whole PoGo database and do a mass removal.
The POIs arent necesarrily wrong there. Somebody just abused the system with submitting on wrong locations and then editing. This is abuse.
The question is: Why doesn't Niantic do anything by their own until someone reports these abuses?
They have the whole database, they can run queries to check the spacing between wayspots, density rules in cells, who did nominate and who did send location edits.
They have all the data but it seems that they relay on mere players to report the issues.
Nadie se esperaba que abusaran del sistema de está forma, en todo el mundo muchas comunidades le dan el buen visto a el abuso lo cual ya es un problema, yo creo que la mejor solución es que se sigan reportando estos lugares creados con abuso del sistema para que las personas vean que el abuso no lleva a nada, ahora están saliendo a la luz muchos más lugares así, creados con abuso del sistema
Because they are making money from it still 🤷♂️
Yes, that's also my feeling about it.
Many of those abuse locations have been known for a long time and Niantic hasn't done anything about them until specifically reported. If they wanted to clear their games from cheaters, it should be quite easy to find out those that stayed in those spots (or "walking" a path around them) for a long time and then send a strike to them.
Could be something worth forcing into the next AMA.
It's funny to see many spoofers' reactions after Zaragoza has been 'destroyed' by Niantic. Some were posting more alternative hotspots in Twitter (which are also prone to be reported, and I assume all of them already covered here by @TheFarix-PGO ), while few were telling others not to share more hotspots' coordinate (which are useless now, unless there are still many hotspots undiscovered that should be anticipated by Niantic). One notable reaction I found just now:
What's even funnier, one reply of that thread still blaming AR Scanning for this.
They have proved AMA after AMA that they are perfectly capable of dodging the questions that they don't want to reply or to rephrase and answer them in such a vague way that it's totally useless.
True. And after 3.1 they proved they don't mind going back and deleting previous responses and that they don't really care about the importance we've placed on the correspondence.
Theres no point wasting time on it on an ama as its already against the rules it not possible to do now in the game. This happened when the game was first released
What I meant was not to delete the waypoints (they’re probably legitimate in Ingress and other stuff Niantic might use them for) but remove the stops in PoGo.
When a new portal appears in Ingress, an algorithm determines whether it can go into PoGo. Surely the same algorithm can be retrospectively applied to take them out again if, as per the photos above, people have been clearly abusing the system. This way, there is no requirement for them to be told, it will automatically happen.
all you have to do is to move every POI around 10 centimeters and BOOM, they will disappear.
The people that have created such abuses quickly told everyone to reject any location edit (or any kind of edit) as soon as the first report of the new system that enforces the cell rules.
You can check reddit for such examples easily.
If accepted...
Well, it looks like Niantic reversed course and restored the Pokestops at Zaragoza. I guess blatant exploitation and abuse is ok so long as Niantic makes a profit. I guess the spoofers and cheaters won this round.
Makes me wonder if the reversal was intentional or not - unless they didn't clean up properly, then sync happened, and they came back. 🤨
Did Niantic just reverse itself on this?
Money talks
Give that this topic was originally deleted and only restored when I raised a stink about it, I wonder if there is some Niantic employee who is running interference on this abuse. @NianticCasey-ING Can you give any insight as to why those stops that clearly violate the spacing algorithm were restored?
Niantic doesn't care about large scale abuse. Best I ever got for an answer was the usual copy and paste stuff. Threads in the general section just get ignored.
Sometimes fakers do get a warning though ... and then they continue faking
Tu mismo lo dijiste, ganaron una batalla pero no la guerra hay que seguir reportando estos lugares creados con abuso hasta que el abuso deje de existir, hay que seguir en la lucha contra el abuso
all we need is a spoofer editing the location of every PokeStop for 1 centimeter
It's Niantic we're talking about here (apologies for bagging them on their official forum but I've been on the end of plenty of Nia incompetence), I also wouldn't be surprised if the initial deletion of this thread was caught in auto-mod.
Keep it up though, the integrity of the Wayfarer system is a worthy fight.
If Niantic is unwilling to remove abusive clusters, which the return of this one would imply, then there will be no point in reporting them.
Surprised Nianic doesn't have a spy in r/PokemonGoSpoofing or smtn to try and find the abuse.