Oh man.. probably should have passed laws to regulate data harvesting and digital privacy back in the 90s
when the Internet was still just a series of tubes...
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Oh no, not only the very ethical American companies get my data?
What a disaster.
Wait until you find out that Saudi Arabia have a big stake in Disney, Facebook and OpenAI.
Unpaywalled link is convenient but so do consider subscribing if you want to support this kind of journalism :
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Remember when the US was going to make them into a "pariah state"?
Thinks changed quickly when you could sell them $350,000,000,000 worth of murder stuff didn't it?
Made a lot less waves back then.
Priorities I guess.
Tell me again how tik tok is a Chinese spy network? When they can just BUY our information like this?
Probably they are all spy networks... Not to pee in your cereal or anything.
If everything is a spy network, then nothing is
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Saudi Arabia isn't a person. I hate it when news titles aren't specific enough. Is it the government that bought them? A private company? Just a dude that happens to be Saudi? The implications can change drastically based on who bought it.
Also the article link isn't working for me so all i got is the title. And as most people that'd see it, they'd also only read the title, this type of simplification can lead to a lot of misinformation. Or worse, racism, as you combine a whole country and its people to one entity which is dehumanizing. I'm speaking from experience as a Saudi person who's always grouped with the "saudi" or "Arabic " or "brown" groups instead of another human being.
In short, news should stop generalizing and be more specific, especially in the titles, the part that most people will interact with.
Saudi Arabia isn’t a person.
Yes, it is. In an autocratic monarchy, in a dictatorship, everything belongs to the king. The house of Saud is treating the country as their personal property and let's not pretend that anything would prevent the guy who killed a journalist in his embassy from accessing that data.
unpaywalled: https://archive.is/7yc9S
A Saudi Arabian company that was created by the Saudi Arabian government just purchased Pokémon Go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Investment_Fund
If you can't see the article i will paste it for you.
I'm speaking from experience as a Saudi person who's always grouped with the "saudi" or "Arabic " or "brown" groups instead of another human being.
So am i, and i'm also sick of it and the people who use this to fuel discrimination. I see this article as more of a reason to hate the sauds, not saudi people.
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I mean, if it's in Saudi Arabia you know the royal family is in full control, so in this it kind of makes sense
Saudi Arabia? I remember about 10 or so years ago that Saudi Arabia had banned Pokemon because "it promotes materialism".
What changed?
Money.
After MBS became the de-facto leader (after some purges, to centralize all the power to himself) he started "liberalizing" and giving us more freedoms. It's all bullshit.
Women weren't even allowed to drive four years ago. That was probably the only good thing he gave us.
I’d imagine this isn’t going to stop anyone from using it though.
Haven't played the game in years, and wasn't aware of any of this. People discussing "What's worse, Saudi Arabia or Niantic?" feels positively dystopian.
I'm a level 50 Pokémon Go player, who has played since release day, and that's the app deleted.
Next up will be requesting removal of my data under GDPR.
Yet another good thing ruined by the Saudi government. Why can't we have nice things? :(
I don’t disagree with the sentiment but PoGo has been pretty trash for a while now
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Bold of you to assume this wasn't always the plan for Pokemon Go. A ton of online services are basically designed from the get go to be mass surveillance machines and the founders know they're eventually going to be sold as exactly that.
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Were you unaware of the last 10 years of Niantec/Google openly admitting that they were using camera and location data to train their models? Were you blinded by the fun of the game? Or did you just think the data you were uploading wasn’t that important?
Yes, I was aware though under the impression of improving geospatial and mapping models. There are many ways in which we are now entwined into these systems and so it's a matter of deciding, on a personal level, what you are comfortable with.
I am certainly not comfortable with the data going to Saudi Arabia where access to such is used for active suppression and harm.
Maybe it was a naive viewpoint at the time, but the climate of 2016 was very different to what it is now.
Niantic and Google are (were?) not companies with very strong links to the Saudi Arabian government.
I've seriously reconsidered how much I use Google in recent months, but Google and Niantic aren't owned by a government that is incredibly repressive and discriminatory of people like myself.
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Lol everyone owns your data except for you
Yay, capitalism.
The scene in Austin Powers when he first comes out of cryo and assumes the communists won the cold war makes a lot more sense to me as an adult
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A country that investing in any successful product doesn't mean they want your data. If they are interested they can buy it directly from any large organization and if must they can use spy ware or other means of intelligence.
If you have privacy concern, you have bigger issue than a game that is for all we know is dying game.
I've tried some of scopely's games. They're following this playbook to the letter.
You'll be getting freebies when your friends spend cash. You'll get time limited offers. You'll be paying to "try again", against other players.
Who wins when a wall street broker and an oil sheikh use their wallets to fight over a Pokémon gym? Scopely wins.
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Saudi Govt: So MbS, what are we doing this week?
MbS: Well, first we’re gonna buy Pokémon Go, and if THAT goes well, then we’ll try to negotiate peace for Ukraine.
Saudi Govt: Priorities, Crowned Prince Mohammed. 💪
Time to never use any of their products again
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