I apologize if I missed something - there was a lot of incorrect information going around so I didn’t read everything.
Is this not answered? It is a little buried but it’s always been clear to me that we reject outright (not duplicate) a nomination using the exact same photo.
The following should not be submitted and, when reviewing, should be considered as rejection criteria:
- […]
- Exact duplicates of existing photos
Selecting the photo as a duplicate would add the photo. I wish Niantic used more algorithms to handle exact duplicates (and watermarks, 3rd party, etc) but that’s not how they currently handle things. It’s easier to reject than duplicate and expect somebody to clean it up, later.