No way. 3rd party photo and abuse are totally different.
Abuse is the rejection reason that reviewers chose. The warning email is for using third party photos, which can be viewed as a form of wayfarer abuse. You got caught stealing photos and trying to use them for your nomination. Assuming that’s the only thing wrong with the nomination, don’t do it again and you should be OK.
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Hello
There are a couple of issues to unpick.
Thanks for posting all the details. The phrases used in the email are meant to cover a range of possible actions. I can understand why it looks confusing from your perspective, but the key here is that you used pictures that were not your own which is the wrong thing to do.
I believe you understand that now.
You received a formal warning. The idea of this is to allow you to establish what you did wrong and amend what you do to avoid a ban.
It seems, you have understood that, which is good.
If you submit following the rules nothing will happen. If you are concerned about a submission you are welcome to seek help here prior to submission for advice.
If you decide to take a break from submitting that is also understandable.
It’s up to you exactly what you want to do next. But do stick to the rules.
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I just want to be sure not to be banned for asking that plate even with my photo.
Too many loyalists have been warned and/or suspended for wayfarer in Italy, while it s still full of spoofers.
Sorry, but spoofing is a much more severe rule breaking that whatever comes to wayfarer.
Your own photo of the plaque should be fine. Take your own photo as the supporting.
That will ensure you are doing nothing malicious with the photo.
Keep your description factual about why the plaque is there.
Just to check what sort of building is it on?
Again, this is a warning, which is meant to educate. Wayfarer staff is asking you to review the criteria and guidelines to make sure you are following them. As long as you do follow the guidelines, you should be good, even with your own photos.
Those that spoof most likely would get a harsher punishment, such as a ban from all games and services. This is outlined in the abuse policy, that they do look at the severity of the abuse when issuing warnings/bans, so yes, spoofing would most likely be given a harsher punishment than just a warning.
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Sorry, but I can’t trust at the moment
And that’s your decision. We’re just letting you know what to do to prevent this from happening in the future, educating you like staff did.
Spoofers are still playing. Do you wish me to give you group links with members deliberately bragging rights for spoofing? I reported thousands of them, and they re still around.
General reminder to please calm down a bit.
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Other people cheating really sucks, but it doesn’t mean there arent other rules to follow such as taking your own pictures
Tbh I do agree with you, Niantic has not done much about cheating in the past - the occasional banwave for spoofers, but for the most part cheaters are allowed to cheat, for example almost every local player here has 2 or more accounts and that seems to be common in many communities
The part where people do get warned and banned regularly is wayfarer - presumably because that affects the integrity of the product. So we do have to be very careful and stick to the wayfarer rules as well as the standard Terms of Service if we want to keep our accounts safe
Either way, your warning was not unfair, it was just awkwardly worded. It was due to not taking your own pictures. Thats a really easy issue to avoid in future, so you should be fine going forward
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Spoofers playing the games are handled by the game staff, not Wayfarer. Wayfarer doesn’t handle anything game related, just Wayfarer related, which your warning is.
I have come across players with multiple accounts in PoGo before, and I make sure to report them to PoGo. And yes, I still see them playing, so I keep reporting. I even had someone that lives quite a ways from me ask if they could log into my account on one of their devices to better play, but I had to tell them that’s against the Terms of Service, and could get both of our accounts banned.
Is it frustrating? Yes. Does is cause some that play the games the right way to sometimes stop playing? Possibly, possibly not. It hasn’t stopped me, as I know I’m following the rules, and I know I’m doing the right thing by reporting those not following the rules.
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Actually I would argue that it’s the other way around. Spoofing is definitely bad and goes against the Terms of Service, I think we can all agree on that. Spoofers can definitely be a nuisance (I had a load of them battling over my local gyms at around 1:30 this morning).
Using a third party photo is copyright infringement though. That’s an actual real world legal issue that you could potentially get yourself and Niantic into trouble with. That sets it apart as a bigger issue because it no longer only concerns the ToS, but actual real world laws.
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