Hello, I’m still new to reviewing and I’ve been running into multiple fake nominations from a similar area. Many of the existing pins cannot be found on StreetView and they tend to all fall within close proximity of one house. I usually try to give people benefit of the doubt (since StreetView is not always up to date), but some of the nominations are blatant AI images. Is there anything I can do about this situation?
Hello and welcome to the forum.
Yes! There is an external report abuse form that you can use to submit a report about this issue. Here’s the link to the form:
Be sure to to take screen shots of the nominations/wayspots and note their location. After you fill in the form and submit it, you will receive a confirmation email from niantic and you can add your screenshots there. It may take a while but niantic will usually email again letting you know if action has been taken.
If you are actively reviewing nominations at the time and you spot something you want to report, you can use the report button at the top of the page. Personally, I prefer the external form as I can explain my report.
Do bear in mind you only have 20 minutes per review, meaning after 20 minutes, the nomination you’re looking at will expire and you wont be able to see/interact with it after.
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Since this is abuse, another option is to use help chat for one-offs. You can pull up the help tab on the sidebar and tap the chat bubble.
If it is more that one thing, I prefer the reporting abuse form, too. Help chat doesn’t send emails.
I don’t get a response when I use that in review “Report” option, so it is my least favorite. But sometimes I will use that option AND help chat to get an acknowledgement that they saw the report.
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I always forget to mention help chat since I use it so seldomly. Whenever I submit a ticket I get stuck and can’t submit a new one until I get a prompt to start a new conversation. But it can be very useful for quick location edits. Still totally valid though.
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I must say that I had a disappointing interaction with support on something similar, two fake trail markers which were clearly off the trail according to the OSM route. They did ask me to drive to the other side of the country to take some photos. Usually though when I report such things they are (I think) acted on, so perhaps a one-off.
Also, we have been promised a Wayfarer map so if you see signs of abuse you can also make a note of it and come back when the map is live to check if the wayspots are still there (or if it has gotten worse).
Thank you very much for the response. I have filled out the provided report form and included as much identifying information as possible in the short time-frame (names of the Wayspots, approximate coordinates). Around 8 fake nominations in total, but there are possibly more in the area.
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