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This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my
by relyks 2y ago
This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's not very convenient to take a video around the object or location in question. If they release the model and weights, though, I will feel I contributed to the greater good.
- rbrown 2y agoThey won't. It's the same data collection play as every other Google project Just for clarity on this comment and a separate one, Niantic is a Google spin out company and appears to still be majority shareholder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.#As_an_independent,_private_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.#As_an_independen...
- relyks 2y agoGoogle actually has released weights for some of their models, but judging by the fact that this model is potentially valuable, they likely will not allow Niantic for this
- ysofunny 2y ago> Google actually has released weights for some of their models, but judging by the fact that this model is potentially valuable, they likely will not allow Niantic for this which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it
- aqfamnzc 2y agoWelcome to the modern internet. While you're at it, please get me access to Google's captcha models facebook face directory Google's GPS location data hoard, (most every android phone on the planet 24/7 (!) and any iPhone navigating with gmaps) And so on and so on All of which I've directly contributed to and never (directly) recieved anything in return
- RussianCow 2y ago> All of which I've directly contributed to and never (directly) recieved anything in return To be fair, you received a service for free that you may have otherwise had to pay for. I'm not saying it's just, but to say you didn't get anything in return is disingenuous.
- aqfamnzc 2y agoAgreed. I mostly meant that I'll never see the actual dataset that I contributed to. That's why I'd prefer to spend my time on things that I can see, like OpenStreetMap :)
- chipsrafferty 2y agoThe some is true of this case, the game is free.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoWhile you weren't paying for it with currency, the service is most certainly not "free". There's still a transaction happening when you use the service, albeit a transaction the service provider refuses to acknowledge outside the terms of service.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> any iPhone navigating with gmaps Not saying you are saying this but it amused me how many people believe(d) that Apple wasn’t mining and hoarding location data either because well, they’re Apple and they love you. All those traffic statuses in Apple Maps on minor side streets with no monitoring came from the … traffic fairy, perhaps.
- try_the_bass 2y ago> which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it I don't understand this perspective. While all players may have collectively made this model possible, no individual player could make a model like it based on their contributions alone. Since no single player could replicate this outcome based on only their data, does it not imply that there's value created from collecting (and incentivizing collection of) the data, and subsequently processing it to create something? It actually seems more unfair to demand the collective result for yourself, when your own individual input is itself insufficient to have created it in the first place. I don't think producers of data are inherently entitled to all products produced from said data. Is a farmer entitled to the entirety of your work output because you ate a vegetable grown on their farm?
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago[flagged]
- Matticus_Rex 2y agoNiantic was clear about the product of the labor: In exchange for swiping the PokeStop, you'd get the rewards. No one was ever told they'd get more than that, and no one had any reasonable expectation that they'd get more.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoExpectations are often unreasonable from some perspective. It's not difficult to see why users are upset.
- Matticus_Rex 2y agoFor people who've dealt with children a lot, sure. But making an exchange and then expecting a cut of the other side's profits on top of what you exchanged for is possibly the definition of unreasonable expectations.
- 2y ago
- eru 2y agoThey got to play the game for free, and I'm fairly sure what Google is doing here is within the terms and conditions that people agreed to. (And I don't even mean only that it complies with the exact wording of the fine print that nobody reads anyway, but also that everyone expects the terms-and-conditions to say that the company owns all the data. So no surprises to anyone.)
- bitwize 2y agoI kept wondering why a Google spinoff was named after a river and community in Connecticut, one of the least Googley locales in the country. The connection is a ship, built in Connecticut, which brought gold rushers to San Francisco and was run aground and converted to a hotel there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic_(whaling_vessel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic_(whaling_vessel) The company was named after the ship.
- fragmede 2y agoYou've also been tricked into making your comment, which will undoubtedly be fed into an LLM's training corpus, and someone will be profiting off that, along with my comment as well. What a future we live in!
- rbrown 2y agoNooooooooooOooOooOo!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- relyks 2y agoLol, do you really think that? I did it from having a desire to contribute to the conversation and I was aware that that would be a future possibility :) I'm not really getting much in return or being incentivized by Y combinator
- CaptainFever 2y agoI think the joke was that it's kind of the same with Pokemon GO. You play the game mainly because it's fun or lets you get some exercise in, so it's not really a bad thing that the company used the data to train a useful model. You're still having fun or doing exercise regardless of what they do with the data. Essentially, it's a positive externality: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfailure/positive-externality/ https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa... But I think your point, if I understand it correctly, is that the in-game rewards kind of "hacked your brain" to do it, which is the part you're objecting to?
- spencerflem 2y agoI think that's part of it- but another part is a lot of people do not like what Gen AI is doing and are offended that what was a fun game is now part of that project. Like when captchas were for making old books readable it felt a lot more friendly than now where its all driverless car nonsense
- Schnouki 2y agoYeah, they did the same in Ingress: film a portal (pokéstop/gym) while walking around it to gain a small reward. I've always wondered what kind of dataset they were building with that -- now we know!
- denismi 2y agoDo you honestly feel tricked that a gameplay mechanic which transparently asks you to record 50-100MB videos of a point-of-interest and upload it to their servers in exchange for an (often paid/premium) in-game reward was a form of data collection? I don't think I've done any in PoGo (so I know it's very optional), but I've done plenty in Ingress, and I honestly don't see how it's possible to be surprised that it was contributing to something like this? It is hardly an intuitively native standalone gameplay mechanic in either game.
- UltraSane 2y agoHonestly you should have assumed they were using the collected data for such a purpose. It would be shocking if they weren't doing this directly or selling the data to other companies to do this.
- lozf 2y agoAssumed … or just read the Terms & Conditions / AUP like we did 10 years ago when they were using "Ingress" for location collection & tracking.
- bastloing 2y agoThe game is free, there has to be some way for them to profit, interesting to see this was it.
- earleybird 2y agoWhen ever it's free, it's all about the data. I recall having a conversation circa 2004/5 with a colleague that Google was an AI company, not a search company.
- eru 2y agoSearch is AI. Or would have been considered AI in eg the 1980s. The goalposts of what counts as AI are constantly moving further and further away. Simple algorithms like A* once counted as part of AI.
- kortilla 2y agoThis wasn’t it. It was from gems
- phendrenad2 2y agoWere you really tricked? Hard to believe that someone on Hacker News saw Pokemon Go and didn't immediately think of the data collection possibilities.
- JohnMakin 2y agoIt may surprise you to learn pokemon go is nearly a 10 year old game based on 40 year old beloved IP that when it was released did not exist in the same data hellscape we do today, and even if it did, the attraction of the IP would overrule people thinking about this kind of thing. These kinds of comments are extraordinarily disingenuous sounding, particularly when anyone can spend 3 seconds and figure out their primary market is literal children.
- eru 2y ago> [...] when it was released did not exist in the same data hellscape we do today [...] That was fairly obvious at the time. And people used more or less exactly the same language to describe the world back then, too. > These kinds of comments are extraordinarily disingenuous sounding, particularly when anyone can spend 3 seconds and figure out their primary market is literal children. Poke Mongo was popular with people of all age groups, and (most) children have parents or other guardians to help them with these decisions.
- viknesh 2y agoI believe Google explicitly stated that they used data collected from Ingress (arguably a predecessor to Pokemon Go) at the time. It's the reason Niantic was founded. It's hard to take these complaints seriously.
- AlwaysRock 2y ago> and give you some useful items as rewards Were you tricked, or were you just poorly compensated for your time?
- stouset 2y agoFrankly given the numbers of hours of entertainment most people got out of Pokémon Go, I suspect this might be one of the cases where people have been best compensated for their data collection.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neolefty 2y agoFriendships too!
- sangnoir 2y agoFrankly, with the amount of real-world walking required to progress in Ingress and Pokémon Go, most players were compensated by the motivation to get a decent amount of exercise, which had a net positive impact on their health. Most exercise apps require users to pay subscriptions for the pleasure of using them.
- omoikane 2y agoThey did at least published their research, and also dataset for 655 places: https://research.nianticlabs.com/mapfree-reloc-benchmark https://research.nianticlabs.com/mapfree-reloc-benchmark This was linked the news post (search for "data that we released").
- underlipton 2y agoMy reaction, also. "You used me... for LAND DEVELOPMENT! ...That wasn't very nice."
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor You were playing a game without paying for it. How did you imagine they were making money without pimping your data?
- mgiampapa 2y agoLots of people are spending a lot of money on in app purchases in these games already.
- ipsum2 2y agoNiantic made 700 million dollars last year, mostly selling virtual game items.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoWhy would anyone think niantic would protect user-data from profit?
- melagonster 2y agoMaybe they trust Pokemon as a IP? Usually Nintendo keeps your data safe.
- thephyber 2y agoAll companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but… If you enjoy the game, play the game. Don’t boycott/withhold because they figured out an additional use for data that didn’t previously exist. Another way of viewing this: GoogleMaps is incredibly high quality mapping software with lots of extra features. It is mostly free (for the end user). If no one uses it, Google doesn’t collect the data and nobody can benefit from the analysis of the data (eg. Traffic and ETA on Google Maps) There’s no reason to hold out for a company to pay you for your geolocation data because none of them offer that service.
- eru 2y ago> All companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but… I'm fairly sure, if you read the terms-and-conditions, it probably said that the company owns this data and can do what they want with it. > There’s no reason to hold out for a company to pay you for your geolocation data because none of them offer that service. Well, it can make perfect sense (to some people) to hold out forever in that case.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago> terms-and-conditions I would argue that's being legally truthful, but not practically truthful. The company knows there are ways they can ensure their consumers are aware of the truth. And they know that burying it in Ts and Cs isn't one of them.
- eru 2y agoI'm inclined to agree with your distinction in general. But not in this particular case: Everybody knows, even without actually bothering to read the terms-and-conditions, that they will say that the company owns all the data. Letter and spirit agree. In some sense reading the the T&Cs might actually be detrimental to your understanding: you might misinterpret the carefully lawyered language to conclude that there are certain limits to what the company can do with your data. But they are probably way better than you at interpreting legal terms they crafted themselves.
- AlphaWeaver 2y agoImagine how those of us who played Ingress (Niantic's first game) feel... We were tricked into contributing location data for the game we loved, only to see it reused for the far more popular (and profitable) Pokemon Go.
- jcpham2 2y agoThe Google - Niantic - Ingress - borg - kubernetes conspiracy must be unraveled
- sangnoir 2y agoWhy would anyone take issue with this? Asking as someone who tried both games at different points. Niantic was always open with the fact that they gather location data, particularly in places cars can't go - I remember an early blog post saying as much before they were unbundled from Google. No one was tricked, they were just not paying attention.
- lithiumii 2y agoAs long as they make enough money from Pokemon Go to sustain Ingress, I OK with that.
- try_the_bass 2y agoI didn't feel tricked. Still don't. They were pretty up-front about it bring a technology demo for a game engine they were building. It was obvious from the start that they would build future games on the same platform.
- themoonisachees 2y agoRight? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here and on Lemmy, the whole point of ingress was that it was made to sell Google mapping data and point of interest data, that's why the game didn't have monetizing practices for so long (of course it started having them once all the data was sold but hey)
- 0xEF 2y ago
- kjkjadksj 2y agoWell now by posting your thoughts to hn, you have been tricked yet again to give up free labor to train ai models.
- RobRivera 2y agoOne of the reasons i never played pokemon go is because there was no guarantee I didnt have my data sold. I can't tell you why other people wouldn't think of this concern
- weird-eye-issue 2y agoPlease don't tell me you were just now realizing this
- dogcomplex 2y agoDid anyone here on hackernews not seriously assume this was the real reason for the existence of that game since day 1?
- eru 2y agoI'm not sure about the 'real reason'. It's perhaps more like: some folks an Niantic wanted to make a Pokemon game, and this way they could make it financially viable?
- chii 2y ago> I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. you werent tricked - your location data doesn't belong to you when you use the game. I don't get why people somehow feel that they are entitled to the post-facto profit/value derived from the data that at the time they're willingly giving away before they "knew of" the potential value.
- rlt 2y ago“If you're not paying for the product, you are the product” (I realize you can pay, but are not required to)
- alpaca128 2y agoNowadays you are the product either way unless you avoid pay via pirating.
- isodev 2y ago> I feel … I have been tricked Everything “free” coming from a company means they’ve found a way to monetise you in some way. The big long ToS we all casually accept without reading says so too. Other random examples which appear free but aren’t: using a search engine, using the browser that comes with your phone, instagram, YouTube… etc. It’s not always about data collection, sometimes it’s platform lock-in, or something else but there is always a side of it that makes sense for their profit margin.
- hackernewds 2y agoonly a sith speaks in absolute. plenty of especially free AI products out there
- akritrime 2y agoand who is funding them? how are they paying for their servers? a product can't be free, someone somewhere is paying for it. the main question is why are they paying for it.
- isodev 2y agoWhich are surely, totally not ingesting every iota of data they can get their hands on (legally or not, including your prompts) for training and the soon-to-be born “embedded ads”.
- phito 2y agoThey're free because they're either gathering more data or trying to capture the market.
- kreddor 2y agoNo such thing as a free lunch.
- 9dev 2y agoHiding shady or unexpected stuff in the TOS is illegal in the EU and other countries for example. So just because some companies behave amoral, that doesn’t mean we just have to accept hundreds of pages of legalese being able to dictate us.
- 1024core 2y agoAs the old adage goes, "if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product"...
- erk__ 2y agoIt should just be "you ARE the product" giving that they don't care if you paid them or not.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoWeren't they pretty open about this being their business model?
- markcerqueira 2y ago> They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. There are plenty of non-scan tasks you can do to get those rewards as well but I do think Poffins (largely useless unless you are grinding Best Buddies) are locked behind scan tasks. Source: Me. This is the one topic I am very qualified to speak to on this website.
- jjallen 2y agoAt some point can we agree that if we don't pay anything for something and we experience something fun, it's ok for the company to get something for investing millions of dollars in creating the experience for us in return? If you weren't aware until now and were having fun is this outcome so bad? Did you have a work contract with this company to provide labor for wages and they didn't pay you? if not, then I don't think you can be upset that they are possibly profiting from your "labor". Every time we visit a site that is free, which means 99.9% of all websites, that website bore a cost for our visit. Sometimes they show us ads which sometimes offsets the cost of creating the content and hosting it. I am personally very glad with this arrangement. If a site is too ad filled, I just leave immediately. With a game that is free and fun, I would be happy that I didn't have to pay anything and that the creator figured out a way for both parties to get something out of the deal. Isn't that a win-win situation? Also, calling your experience "labor" when you were presumably having fun (if you weren't then why were you playing without expectation for payment in return?) is disingenuous. At some point we need to be realistic about the world in which we live. Companies provide things for free or for money. If they provide something for "free", then we can't really expect to be compensated for our "labor" playing the game and that yes, the company is probably trying to figure out how to recoup their investment.
- invariantviola 2y agoReally? You feel … tricked? Are you new around here??
- aeternum 2y agoI mean it was ultimately a research task
- sussmannbaka 2y agoNow imagine how artists feel – and they didn’t even get any Pocket Monsters in return.
- renewiltord 2y ago[flagged]
- Elvie 2y agoBut did you really scan the items they wanted? Most people in my local community scan their hands or the pavements around the pokestop. They have a great map of London pavements if they want to do it.