St. Cloud Abuse Update 4: The concerted effort continues

AisforAndis-INGAisforAndis-ING Posts: 1,072 Ambassador
in General Discussion

St. Cloud, FL is at it again. Just like always, the people of St. Cloud are continuing to submit fake wayspots, colluding together to move wayspots during review and approve low-quality wayspots, resubmitting wayspots removed by Niantic, all while finding fun new ways to **** me. As usual, a full list of abusive wayspots will be at the end of the post. Something that is also worth mentioning this time around is that the satellite view of the area has finally been updated. 


Resubmission of nominations removed by Niantic

There is a new trend that has started of users from the St. Cloud area attempting to appeal and replace wayspots that were removed by Niantic as a result of them not having safe pedestrian access, among possibly other reasons. This has happened on this forum at least four times by at least three different people in the past month or so. Those posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

The first post discusses Mosaic Tile Heron, however, after the now-banned OP ignored the advice of everyone telling them that it clearly didn’t meet Niantic’s requirements for pedestrian access, the person went ahead and just resubmitted the nomination with an alt account (technically that person’s “main” account), complete with a misleading supplemental that encourages users to accept a nomination that blatantly does not meet the pedestrian access requirement. After just a few days this nomination went on to get approved:


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Unfortunately for the person responsible for this, the new portal was removed within a day thanks to an in-app report for, you guessed it, pedestrian access. (We will talk about how that happened later). The portal getting removed a second time didn’t stop them though, as they went on to submit the portal a third time, and as of now the third iteration is still in-game.

The problem is, this isn’t an isolated incident. In the second post I linked above which discusses Isles Fountain, after having the appeal denied (although for an admittedly weird reason), the OP admitted their intention to do the exact same thing and resubmit the removed wayspot. And they meant it! That nomination was once again submitted and it is now back in game as well.

That user went on to do the same thing with Hammock Pointe Flag Post, which was removed, appealed, and then just resubmitted. That portal now exists as Dedication Flagpole Hammock Pointe.

While not necessarily abuse, the OP in the fourth thread which discussed Lake Nona Golf and Country Club did eventually come to terms with the pedestrian access issue, however, they then went on to discuss their intention to nominate neighborhood signs on corners of intersections instead of ones in the median. Given the track record of St. Cloud approving basically any of their own nominations, including neighborhood signs, this has potential for abuse.

The above instances are not the only cases of them resubmitting wayspots that Niantic removed. Although no one attempted to appeal it before resubmitting, another wayspot that appears to have been removed for pedestrian access and then resubmitted is Turtle Creek Tower, which I believe replaced “Turtle Creek Entrance Tower” at the same location.

It is very clear that the users in this area do not understand the guidelines to submit proper nominations, and that they have no respect for learning and following those guidelines. On the forum they have frequently argued that “the community reviewed them and they were accepted,” but they don’t seem to have any regard for actually following the rules that Niantic sets. This also harkens back to the generic business signs, neighborhood signs, and other extremely low quality submissions that were recently approved in the area that I discussed in Update 3, many of which continue to exist.


Continued Targeted Harassment and Ingress Multiaccounting

In Update 3 I went into detail about the “for all to enjoy” callsign that has been used among the abuse group. Well, it turns out that these people have found a way to take that and target me even more. Shortly after my last update, these people went digging for my friend code, managed to find it, and sent me a friend request on my Pokemon Go account from an account named “4All2NJoy”. Luckily it was pretty easy to figure out who was responsible and where they acquired my friend code from.

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Of course it will come to absolutely no surprise that there is now also a matching Ingress account running around the St. Cloud area with the same name (“4All2NJoy”) and of course the account was deployed into a number of the newly identified fake/abusive portals. The account was also kind enough to deploy into the replacement Mosaic Tile Heron portal right after it was created, making it very easy to report in-app. This is no doubt a new account being leveled up to be able to continue nominating more abusive wayspots with. This account needs to be banned, along with the main account of the person responsible (the same person who submitted Mosaic Tile Heron and other wayspots on this list).


Niantic’s refusal to rectify portal stacking is incentivizing this abuse.

After posting my Update 3 thread, I received this message on Facebook. This is the same person who submitted Mosaic Tile Heron, by the way.


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It has proven to be trivial for these people to create new pokestops by moving them wherever they want during review, as after 4 different reports they haven’t stopped. Because these people have no problems moving things during review, they are creating lots of things that should have been rejected for proximity if they were approved in their correct location, or at minimum they are creating Pokestops that only should have been a portal due to S2 Cell rules. When Niantic moves these wayspots back to their “correct” locations the POIs don’t reroll, unlike with what happens when a regular location edit is resolved. This means that Niantic is rewarding these people with extra stacked pokestops when resolving this abuse. And judging by the message above, it is clearly motivating them to continue abusing. The pokestop stacks across the city need to be rerolled. I shared this image before but this is just one example: 


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This stack can be seen here at Veterans Park, but it is only one of many. To reiterate how insane the abuse is, one of the cells has EIGHT Pokestops in one L17 S2 Cell, and the neighboring cell has another three. There are multiple other large stacks such as Lakefront Park and Downtown St. Cloud, and an innumerable number of small stacks across the city. Niantic needs to outright delete these Pokestops, when actioning them for abuse, or they need to get rerolled when they are moved from one location to another.


Using the Abuse Form to further their abuse?

Possibly the most puzzling case of abuse is the story of Rotary Club Bench. I had Rotary Club Bench on my list in Update 3. Instead of being submitted in the correct place, and moved during review, Rotary Club Bench was submitted in the wrong place, a couple blocks away from where it should have been, and was then accepted in that same incorrect place. I reviewed this nomination, and the supplemental photo clearly showed it that it is at approximately 28.255010,-81.293699 across the street from 400 Dakota Ave, St Cloud, FL 34769, which can be seen in the supplemental photo. 


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A user known to be involved with the abuse actually reached out to me and claimed that this one was submitted in the incorrect place by accident and asked me how they could fix it and get it moved to the correct location, and I told them to use the abuse form to submit a move request. Well, I’m guessing that they did eventually do that, because the wayspot did get moved… to an entirely different bench even further away from the actual location. No idea how exactly this happened, but it is definitely not in the correct place currently. It belongs at 28.255010,-81.293699.


Abusive wayspots repeatedly landing in the same locations:

Now that we are 5 reports in, more and more patterns are becoming visible. One of these patterns is that some of the locations where the abusive wayspots keep landing are repeatedly the same. For example, Conservation Area Sign is at least the second or third fake wayspot to end up at the end of this culdesac, with other fake wayspots having been previously removed from this small neighborhood. Similar examples at other locations include Legacy Playground, Oak Ridge Pavilion, and more. These locations are clearly being targeted for the convenience of players. The players involved with and regularly utilizing these locations need to be thoroughly investigated.

The biggest current offender of this trend are the numerous fake/misplaced wayspots at Orlando VA Medical Center at Lake Nona and the surrounding area, including Eagle Statue, World War II MEMORIAL, College of Medicine Clocktower, Lake Nona Information Board, and Metal Daffodils, with even more abuse across the street. This location continues to be a hotspot for illegitimate wayspots, and probably has had the most collective abuse than any other location in the St. Cloud area. It is likely that other wayspots within the hospital that are more longstanding are also abusively misplaced as well, but it is essentially impossible to investigate due to the nature of the hospital and pandemic. I was lucky to be able to catch the reflection on Lake Nona Information Board to tell that it is located near Bosphorous, a restaurant  deep within a plaza across the street.


Conclusion:

Here is the full list of abuse wayspots that I have currently identified:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SsjSoLOAFj_cyRduq_z2laPCiE68Wxr7pEVRkMiN2tg/edit?usp=sharing

I am honestly concerned at what point Niantic will take these people seriously. I first reported this in January, and evidence shows the group was abusing the system long before then. This is a concerted effort by a group of people that isn't going to stop without very severe action from Niantic. Given that almost 6 months and 5 reports later these people are still up to the same things, I can’t see any logic that anything other than permanent bans should be in order at this point.

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