I marked a submission as third party photo because the photo was stolen from the apartment complex’s website. With attention to detail, you can see the same shadows & same cloud formations in the background. But, it appeared on ingress as accepted Wayspot. I have other examples of this, too. I do not think I am too picky overall, but how can I improve my rating when I am “wrong” even in cases that are fact and not opinion-based?
Arrowhead Park and Pool
43.328914,-87.932574
I hope Niantic sees this and responds. This happens to me, too. And then when I report it later, they won’t remove the wayspot, and they want a new photo to even remove the stolen photo. It is infuriating to review correctly, and get a disagreement for it.
The third party photo rejection needs to be under abuse, and something needs to happen to have an in house review when people mark the photo as third party.
IMO, anyone who submits a third party photo should end up on the abuse ladder. I am surprised that Emily didn’t catch that as well.
As reviewers, we are protecting them from copyright infringement lawsuits. We are not asking for a huge reward, but an agreement would be the least they could do to reward thoroughness.
I too note when a photo is taken from a third-party source, and when descriptions have been just copied and pasted from websites. But,
I am not at all confident that Niantic does anything with that information. In fact, I’ve seen a few submissions that I even reported for abuse or fake submissions make it through even though they were clearly fake. Part of the problem with that is that I can’t provide any evidence or explanation for the category you choose as a reviewer.
I’m so confused as to why people use 3rd party photos. Inaccurate locations I can just about understand… but using someone elses photos / Stock photos is so easy to spot.
My theory is that they are not actually there to take photos and are submitting remotely.
That I get in that they are submitting remotely… but to use photos that are not their own is what I don’t get. I guess it’s my photographers instinct that’s causing the confusion.
if they truly don’t understand that it is wrong, it can be an easy way to get a good photo without faces. niantic really needs to come down on not allowing submissions with third party photos to remain on the map imo.
15 posts were split to a new topic: Misplaced Wayspots
Thank you for reporting those. We do take those reports seriously and such behavior is considered abusive and the submitter is subject to enforcement.
Has ML been “trained” to scour online databases for 3pp? Because I still see them in voting…
In my experience, reports for third party photos on live Wayspots are not taken seriously. I’ve reported a couple of Wayspots with third party photos, and in those cases I was told that I should go add a new photo to the Wayspot myself.
You would think it would be a basic task for ML to filter out photos with smaller resolutions than you would expect from any modern cell phone camera. This would get rid of almost all the third party photo submissions
Oh, I found the ticket for one report: Ticket #28441284
The link to the source of the photos is https://www.mihomes.com/new-homes/north-carolina/the-triangle/apex/friendship-station
and the portal is still live with that photo because it is not local to me to go get an appropriate one: Friendship Station Playground (and is pinned away from the playground)
I don’t see the other one I reported at that time in Ingress.
That’s an interesting idea, out of curiosity I checked my own submissions and did find one accepted with just 950 x 950 pixels, with another at 1074 x 1074 pixels. These are resubmissions where I did a tighter crop of the existing photo… I have a few others that I’ve cropped but not as much.
But yes, a low-res photo could trigger some additional checking from Emily. Third-party photos are typically much smaller than genuine submissions.
They are using Google and taking screenshots
Niantic could and should just remove the photo, IMO. One of my friends from India sends gifts with just the blue wayspot symbol. Not sure why it’s like that, but it shows me that they could just remove a photo and leave it generic. That would invite someone local to submit a new photo.
As for someone submitting a stolen photo, they should be placed on the abuse ladder.
Also, I have seen a few submissions lately try to use a screenshot from Google street view. The clue is a weird angled photo taken from the middle of the street.
During the review process, would it work if they gave more weight to rejection votes for reasons such as third party photo, school, fake nomination, etc? These are black and white decisions… not opinion-based like many others.
For your first part: these things in India never had a photo because they were added to Pokémon GO without Wayfarer involved on it.
How do you report fake wayspots? I recently rejected a nomination for a wayspot that was clearly fake. It was not exactly a third party photo, but the nomination photo and the supporting photo looked to be two different AI generated images… not even similar enough to make it believable. Plus, I noticed just now that there are even water marks in the bottom corners of both photos. It is unbelievable that the community ended up accepting it, and I would like to report it. It’s about 100 miles away, so I can’t report it in-game.
