ABUSE - User submits multiple abusive photos complete with spoofing app overlay visible
AisforAndis-ING
Posts: 1,072 Ambassador
A user submitted multiple abusive screenshots of a wayspot as photo submissions, complete with their spoofing app overlay visible in the photos.
Portal: City of Jacksonville St Johns River Park and Marina
Link: https://intel.ingress.com/?ll=30.319505,-81.660454&z=15&pll=30.319505,-81.660454
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So, not only does this player belong to the demographic that Niantic seems to continuously cater to (Big source of income), but he is also submitting photos to WaySpots to help them further improve their geographical map, thus further increasing their profit?
Not too sure if you're going to have any luck with this one Andy. Best of luck!
If the photo I see on a portal is mostly black background from a phone, I'm thinking it's a bad portal not worth visiting.
Well, allow me to be very blunt while not trying to be offensive in any way. You are an Ingress player. As such, your demographic cares for the quality of portals, their correct location, well taken pictures. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and again, do not take this as an offense, as it's just a statement: Ingress has higher standards when it comes to POIs.
This person is using a spoofing app for Pokemon Go, which for Niantic, is the big money maker, and a catalyst for future and past projects (Including Ingress). The majority of the demographic doesn't really care if the portal is a foot away, or has a suboptimal photo, as long as it's a Pokestop/Gym. Again, no offense to PoGo players, me being one myself, i also semi fall into this trap.
Now, since Ingress has almost no P2W features, and doesn't generate as much revenue as PoGo, it thrives on an active, legitimate community. Spoofers/Multiaccounts/Botting is HEAVILY SCRUTINIZED, and most of these accounts get swiftly suspended/banned following reports.
With PoGo, its the exact opposite. It's a cash cow, so it's in Niantic's best interest to maximize revenue, and spoofers are a big slice of that revenue. More accounts means more engagement, a bigger number of "active players" they can plaster onto their app page on Play Store, and more players correlates to more potential new players, which in term correlates to new potential spenders, which then correlates to happier shareholders and more profit for Niantic. Is it correct to publish things like "Contracts of Trust", ToS that heavily "scrutinizes" cheating, announcing "new and improved" anti cheating measures, while also not acting upon them? Absolutely not.
But Niantic is a business, and banning all or the majority of spoofers would reduce their active playerbase by a substantial chunk, cut into their profits, and result in shareholders being unhappy. This is the reason why they are so tame towards them in PoGo, while in Ingress it's the opposite (and WU to an extent, they put out a Cease and Desist for HPWU++ BEFORE the game was even launched). What's the difference between the 3 projects? 2 of them (WU and Ingress) aren't designed to be extremely profitable, while one of them is.
Again, if ANY part of this post is interpreted or could be misrepresented as offensive to anyone reading it, rest assured that it is not the intention, this is a stating of facts. Niantic trades integrity for dollars, and from a business standpoint, dollars gets you funding for projects and vacations, while integrity isn't even a valid collateral on a down-payment.
"YOU'RE JUST A NIANTIC HATER GT. FO WITH YOUR TINFOIL HAT!!! 111!11!" says the angry mob or people who have seen my general sourness towards this company. But now analyze the facts:
Niantic is a multi billion dollar company that has worse PR than Indies/Startups. They also outsource most of the basic things a company should have, mostly to the community: Wayfarer, QA, bug testing, stress testing, Community Managers, etc.
Niantic is also a wealthy company that preys on it's customers (PoGo), creates fomo and makes misleading announcements in order to "force" people to spend money.
This is the same company that has, for years, been deceitful, has blatantly lied to its playerbase, has blatantly insulted their playerbase, and has in general done many shady things. Don't take my word for it, check TheSilphRoad, TrustPilot and even most media outlets: If there's controversy, you can bet Niantic's at the center of it.
I know i will probably get another warning for this post, as again, i'm fully aware that exposing them like this is bad for business, despite me not being offensive and just stating actual facts. You cannot spew out fancy terms like "Contracts of Trust" and then BREAK YOUR OWN CONTRACT multiple times and not expect backlash. Even their recent decisions on PoGo have sparked an outrage in the community, and this has been the MO for quite some time now.
Even just recently, with the Russian wayfarer challenge, they proved their foul play by intentionally ommiting information about what made you eligible for the rewards, moving goalposts at the END of the event, and only just recently did the right thing because there was HUGE BACKLASH. If all of this isn't evidence enough, then i don't know.
Feel free to dislike my post, but remember this: A dislike on statement of facts doesn't mean you don't agree with what is being stated here, it means you know it's true but refuse to admit it.
"Even just recently, with the Russian wayfarer challenge, they proved their foul play by intentionally ommiting information about what made you eligible for the rewards, moving goalposts at the END of the event, and only just recently did the right thing because there was HUGE BACKLASH. If all of this isn't evidence enough, then i don't know."
I'm quoting just this section of @BleedBoss-PGO 's post because that's where I primarily disagree. The Russian event was pre-publicized, received criticism about its rewards, and was adjusted twice by player request. Sure, it was a little confusing, but it was my first event of the type and I figured it out. I don't claim to be the smartest person out there, so I'm a good tester. I appreciate their agility with the rewards, and the fact that they listened to their base and acted upon their wishes.
Also, all Niantic games are designed to be profitable. Pokemon Go is the most successful at it, that's all. HPWU has a more expensive look and feel to it than Pokemon Go will ever have, but it's my third game and I cannot spare the time needed to play well because I'm devoted to Ingress and Pokemon already.
Swing and a miss there buddy, how did you not see the -PGO next to my name?
May I suggest that you take a step back and just take a break from everything related here? Your comment suggests some very unhealthy obsessions and taking a break for a while would do you good.
Welp, early in the morning and no coffee, it still applies to Ingress players and the rest of the post stands true 👍
I wouldn't say so. It's just my personal opinion and factcheck in this company.
Or maybe you should wake up and smell the coffee. 🤷♂️
I'm having trouble determining what this thread has to do with Wayfarer in general. Of course, I'm also having difficulty figuring out the context for the image shown and how it shows spoofing, but maybe I'm just not familiar enough to know what I'm looking for there. I may need someone to draw little red arrows and circles and stuff.
I have lots of opinions about spoofer detection efforts, community attitudes towards various TOS violations, corporate response, etc. etc. that aren't really relevant here. The attitudes of the player communities are much, much different between games - but Wayfarer is not a game, it's a volunteer job. The games don't matter.
The standard of quality of POI's doesn't come from the person's game, but it comes from the person regardless of their preferred game. Stereotyping isn't the right approach, I know people of both Ingress and PoGo that submit trash as well as submit great POI's.
As for the rest of your comment, it sounds like you are defending and advocating spoofers because they allegedly 'bring in so much money' to Niantic. Can you specifically tell us how many spoofers there are, or what percentage of the playerbase they are, or how much income Niantic gets from spoofers? No. So everything there is speculative at best. Maybe your local communities are overrun by spoofers and that's why you say these things, I don't know, if that's the case, then that's a really sad state of affairs.
In my experience spoofers are a tiny minority (that are often removed from local communities) and the PoGo playerbase here is large and they are constantly playing, constantly spending money on the game (I don't want to imagine how much has been spent on raid passes!!). So in that case, relating to this experience, Niantic would get more income from actual players over spoofers.
Saying games "aren't designed to be extremely profitable" is a silly proposition. Ingress was a love-child of a Niantic that helped them branch out from Google and become their own thing. HPWU is the first major non-Niantic developed game to use the LightShip platform (formerly Niantic Real World Platform). Ingress runs at a loss and Niantic are working to make that better (eg. subscriptions), but it still reportedly makes $90k a month, and HPWU apparently makes around $100k per month - no idea how much Niantic gets from licensing LightShip out, but it would be a decent income stream for them now that there are four other games using it (Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Catan: World Explorers, Pikmin App, Transformers: Heavy Metal).
I mostly agree with the rest of your comments about Niantic though, they have very poor communication and practices for a billion dollar company and they should do a lot better.
@BleedBoss-PGO This is not an Ingress issue or a PoGo issue or an issue of any other Niantic game. Wayfarer is not about specific games... it's about building a database of high-quality wayspots around the world. This database is perhaps Niantic's greatest corporate asset as it can be reused over and over for every game they create.
I completely understand that many (but not all) PoGo players only care about having a lot of stops and gyms in whatever locations are convenient for them to play. I don't think that's a good reason for polluting the database with complete and utter garbage.
How can you fact check with personal opinion?🤣
The star icon in the upper lefthand corner of the first two submitted pictures is the menu button for a popular spoofing app.
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Moderator Note: Removed for being off-topic.
I'm passing my personal opinion based on facts. Let me give you an example: Fact: X brand of liquor might be the "best" in terms of brewing.
My opinion: Despite X being the best brew, i don't like it.
Aha! That I did not know. Thank you, @AisforAndis-ING !
Going back to reviewing now.... :)
I dunno, I also play ingress and there are a TON of crappy portals out there.
Both of these are opinions.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, and that's fair. But all the comments i made regarding Niantic are absolute facts. And based on those facts, i built my opinion. Is it just an opinion? Yeah. Is what i stated the truth? Yes.
I don't really see the problem here, officer.
Kinda exactly what i said. Interesting how this community (not you in particular) can have such double standards to the point of disagreeing with my POV yet AGREEING with someone that agrees with me 😂
You might have missed the point. In no way am i promoting filling the database with garbage. And as i stated, from my experience, Ingress players tend to be more detail oriented, quality over quantity. This is not to say ALL Ingress players are a godsend, and not ALL pogo players are stop-hungry.
Also, you have to remember that it IS an issue across multiple games. Moving a POI in pogo doesn't matter much (unless it's into a cell that's already occupied). That same movement used to cause Fortresses in WU to downgrade to Inns, and as far as Ingress goes, that same movement causes links to drop. Same action, different impact.
Meanwhile, @NianticAaron @NianticAtlas @NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard, how about taking a look into this? It's easy birds with one stone: You can remove someone flooding the database with garbage AND ban an admitted spoofer. Christmas came early!
Thanks for bringing this to our notice, @AisforAndis-ING! We'll be certain to investigate your report thoroughly and write back with the information. However, I would be closing this thread for future comments.
@BleedBoss-PGO - You are most welcome to express your disappointment over certain things and share feedback for us to work upon and improve however I would appreciate it if you do this without using certain words that may trigger toxicity in a thread. I hope you understand.
Hi there, @AisforAndis-ING! We have reviewed the report and have taken action on the Wayfinder in accordance with our policies. Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.