Comment on ‘Pokémon Go’ players have been unknowingly training delivery robots

LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

  Except most free and open-source software, major open knowledge bases, literally the social media service you’re using to communicate this point right now…

  While understandable when talking about services by for-profit corporations, this talking point is oversimplified to the point of being obnoxious in a world where I can set up a desktop OS with a fully featured environment and software suite then go browse a social media site where – at no stage – was anything free where I was the product.

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  • redhat421@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, revised version:

    If you’re not paying you’re the product. If you are paying you’re still the product and paying for the privilege*.

    • Except for not for profit software / platforms.

    Humm, that’s not as pithy.

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  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, I didn’t think I needed to make clear I meant with for profit companies.

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• anyhow2503@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Pokémon Go already has multiple revenue streams, including direct in-app purchases.

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  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, but many players don’t pay, especially the huge player bases of children. They can subsidise that by selling your data.

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    • fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Pokemon go has been extremely profitable, the free to play model works. They don’t need to subsidize shit.

      Free to play games work by being pay2win and by catering to whales. Sorry but you are wrong.

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      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I’ve been in software design and development for decades. Sorry, but you are wrong.

        The reason these companies are so profitable is because they sell your data.

        Whales are fine, but that’s not their only revenue stream. People freely give up their data to them and that’s stupidly valuable. If you think these companies aren’t selling it, you’re very naive.

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  • shads@lemy.lol ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think you are forgetting that Niantic made a lot of money off Pokémon GO, not ALL the money, ergo its an abject failure under capitalism and they need to pump up those numbers.

    If they had been making ALL the money they might have been satisfied, for a quarter. Then they would have packaged and sold all that data for more than ALL the money.

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• architect@thelemmy.club ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  True for Corps but not everything

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• TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Is the fediverse free?

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  • Brownboy13@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    While the admins and donations make it free, I guarantee there’s at least a few corporations or government organizations out there scraping the fediverse to gather data. So even though the people hosting it might not have any bad intentions, an open platform like this will still feed the data hungry machine.

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  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Again, I meant for profit companies.

    Volunteer led orgs are different.

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    • TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yay, thanks

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• Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t expect most people still playing Pokémon go are actually kids 😅 I could be wrong, but as someone playing it until pretty recenly and who had friends who still played it at various points I don’t think its really popular with kids anymore

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  • Anivia@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Even at release the majority were adults

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• pHr34kY@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Even if the data comes from kids, it’s not identifiable or personal. It could loosely fall under unpaid child labour if the in-game task is actually just a job in disguise.

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