Another case of mass abused ignored by the form.
Reporting this on behalf of some friends... @NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard , a document, with extensive analysis of various examples and proof, was provided using the form that yielded no results, let me know if you need it again and how I can get it to you (not publicly).
I would like to report a large number of wayspots in the town of Harlow, UK as abusive and fake. The player group in Harlow is coordinating to submit fake and photoshopped wayspots in an effort to increase the density of Pokéstops in their play area and harassing players who try to call them out on it.
On April 10th, we reported all the wayspots we had found up until that point using the abuse report form. We compiled a large document with extensive documentation on the abuse, screenshots, analyses and more on the wayspots in question, and as of today, one month later, not one single portal of the ones we reported have been removed. To this day, new wayspots appear in Harlow that are clearly falsified, indicating that no effort has been done from Niantic to deal with the players in question, proving that the abuse report form is ineffective in dealing with abuse at any scale.
One Ingress player attempted to report a fake wayspot here on the forums a while ago. The player is a local Ingress player. Niantic declined the abuse report on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The local Pokémon group discovered this report and proceeded to **** said player, even going as far as to falsify a trail marker, put the name of the agent on it, and place it near their playing area just to mock the player in question.
I will not share the methodology, the evidence, or the exact number of affected wayspots publicly because that would reveal to the abusers how we have identified many of the portals, but I can say that there are over 30 portals, and I will give some examples of the more obvious ones here.
The full list of abusive portals is included in a Google document that has been attached to every abuse report we have made for portals in Harlow. We have submitted several dozen abuse reports. Niantic should be able to easily find the link to our document by looking through the reports submitted via the form.
The local Pokémon group is called “No Work Club” which abbreviates to “NWC”. Many of the fake wayspots include the phrase “NWC” itself, or the names of fake entities that abbreviate to NWC, such as “National Walk Charity” which is a made-up charity that doesn’t exist. They have put their group’s name, logo and more on various wayspots, and despite our efforts to reject them as fake in review, most of them are being accepted because reviewers don’t take a close enough look on the wayspots that they review from the area.
Example 1: Jean McAlpine Walk - Red Trail marker
This portal is located at coordinates 51.768009,0.075601. If you look at the marker and the text on it, you can clearly see that this is a fake trail marker.
Example 2: **** Brophy Memorial Plaque and Boulder
Located at 51.767067,0.075031, this fake memorial plaque was ordered off Amazon, stuck on a rock, and it was accepted by reviewers because there is no reason to assume it is fake when you see it in review.
Example 3: Glebelands Community Hall
This one, which is at 51.778953,0.113389 has text that is so clearly photoshopped that I have no idea how it passed the reviewers.
After one month of Niantic not doing a thing about any of the portals we reported, we now have to make this abuse publicly known here on the forums in order to get the attention needed from Niantic to actually do something about the abuse, and to call them out on their lack of action to our reports via the form. Please ban these players from submitting and reviewing wayspots and remove all the fake portals we have reported, as these players show no signs of stopping, as they have clearly identified a way to circumvent the system and are using that power to its full extent to flood their town with fake nominations.
Comments
Hi there, @Roli112-PGO! I appreciate you for taking the time and reporting this to us. I have shared your report with our abuse team for their perusal and will write back once I have details to share. Thanks for your patience.
I cannot express how angry and disappointed I am that people need to repeatedly expose themselves to abuse and harassment on the forum because of how ineffective the current abuse form is.
We needed a revamped reporting system weeks... months ago.
The Niantic team members that initially rejected these reports should receive a 30 day ban.
This, @NianticGiffard, as well as the folks who messed up big time with the Pokémon GO seeds,, @NianticCasey-ING.
Has anyone had success with reporting abuse via the form? I've used it half a dozen times over the last few years and never had action taken. I'm not outing myself with them in a report as they're somewhat local. Casey even promised to escalate mine, once, but that never happened.
I may have had success, or maybe I have not. Since we get no feedback after submitting an abuse report, it's really hard to tell. I don't even know if any of my abuse reports were successfully delivered to the Abuse team, or if they've gotten around to reading them. I have, though, seen some of the abusive edits I've reported get accepted and the waypoints moved as a result.
@Gendgi-PGO
As Casey wrote before, "although this form was originally intended to be a stop gap while the team worked to build this in the product, it has been active for too long and it looks like it is causing more problems than it is solving."
I interpret it as no one cares about reports from that form anymore.
Agree on new Pokemon seeds by the way, at least some of them were fake POIs added by group of people who bypassed the review system))
Sadly, some appeals and abuse reports are also getting ignored here. In the end, I am happy that you can bump things up here. Currently, only one report is pending for <1 month. Thats kind of good.
I had a quick looky around their Discord, they've removed me now but I got the intel I needed to make an educated guess at what's going on there.
For whatever reason, Harlow is a priority cell, typically in the UK we have priority cell around coastal areas where the ocean counts as dead-land, where the density is lower than your in-land area's, so with this example, I can see a message from this guy on 30th Jan 2021, showing a sub that was accepted *without upgrade*, that was originally submitted on Jan 25th, so 5 days, no upgrade.
This priority cell allows for submissions to be seen like they are upgraded, but without upgrades and the way a submission is distributed to reviewers, it gets priority over other things. With this information, their players are able to just hammer 5* on anything from Harlow area, no matter what it is, with enough organization with the player/reviewer base, they can vote through absolutely anything before anyone else outside of this priority bubble sees it and rejects them.
Any update on this @NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard ? We'r you able to find the reports with the form? Do you need them again?
@NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard I have confirmed the above 3 exampled (only) have been taken care of, however, as stated earlier (a few times), these are not the only examples. As stated, a file was provided when reported through the forms, and you have not indicated whether you need me to provide again. There are dozens of more that need reviewing.
Hi @Roli112-PGO! We have reviewed the report and have taken action on the 6 Wayspots and 2 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.
Did you read the report though? It wasnt only 6 wayspots?!!! @NianticGiffard @NianticCasey-ING
Thanks for writing back. We'll give it another look and let you know the final verdict.
Can you start a DM so i can provide younwith the document?
I was about to ask you about it, I'll send you a DM to initiate our conversation. I'll see you there!
https://www.harlow.gov.uk/parks-and-culture/parks-and-green-spaces/jean-mcalpine-park
What about it?
Doesn't this nullify your claims about abusing the system? The boulder is there, and was put there as a memorial to this **** Brophy? Are you claiming that this is false/fabricated info? Especially coming from a gov website?
Just curious as saw a lot of portals disappear, and wondered if it was an issue with the system.
IMO it does not. The nomination was for a memorial plaque on the boulder. While the boulder appears to exist, the plaque was fabricated as per the screenshots Roli shared, and is therefore still fake.
Then the boulder might have been eligible as it was, (up to reviewers to decide), but there is proof that the boulder was defaced, and submitted defaced. And thus ineligible as submitted.
I'm from Harlow and i haven't heard of this NWC, (I've only been playing again for 4 months), but 2 pokestops from my local area have been removed, but they were not 'fake' or 'photoshopped'
We would love to see which waypoints you are contending. If they're local to you share some photos proving their existence. Maybe we can help appeal if there was a mistake.
they're 2 of the allotment pokestops that got removed, is there a reason why these can't be pokestops or was this a mistake removal?
You're going to have to be more specific than that? What were the names? in which allotments?
I believe they were Stile Croft Allotment A and B
Sorry but those are as clear as day photoshopped.
A even has lettering over a branch LMAO.
This writing might be photoshopped but these signs are 100% there i walk past them with my dog every day, i've just looked at the pictures (never played close attention to them before) but yeah they are photoshopped with their writing but the actual green signs are there
Those two exclamations don't fit together.
Where do you have the photos from? Maybe an EXIF check will help but the photos from the forum doesn't contain any EXIF data
i said i've never played close attention to the writing, im talking about the actual objects themselves not being photoshopped
If the actual signs are there and readable, you are certainly free to submit the wayspots again with unaltered images. My guess, though, is that the signs were faded enough the original submitter thought they had to cheat to get them accepted.