• j_elgato@leminal.space
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    5 days ago

    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…

  • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Oh no, not only the very ethical American companies get my data?
    What a disaster.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Saudi Arabia? I remember about 10 or so years ago that Saudi Arabia had banned Pokemon because “it promotes materialism”.

    What changed?

    • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 days ago

      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.

  • recentSloth43@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    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.

    • Obelix@feddit.org
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      6 days ago

      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.

    • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 days ago

      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.

      • DaveyRocket@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Anyone that groups individuals with their government is a bigot advertising their bigotry.

        Edit: looks like I upset some bigots.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 days ago

          there are cases where this is more or less true. I think the less democratic/representative and more oppressive a government, the less fair it is to group a people with their regime. the saudis have an absolute monarchy that bone-saws journalists in foreign countries.

          which probably fucks up their culture something awful, but not in the same ways their government is monstrous.

          • DaveyRocket@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            I guess I’m pretty suspicious of all states and the control they exert over the average person to use that metric. It’s my opinion that if democracy worked, it’d be illegal (or subverted by a CIA-backed coup).

            • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 days ago

              well, yes. I don’t think a government can completely align with the values of the people it dominates, they are inherently shitty, but shittiness is a spectrum.

              and yes, that is what the CIA is for. that, and cocaine trafficking.

    • KumaSudosa@feddit.dk
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      6 days ago

      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

  • vane@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Wait until you find out that Saudi Arabia have a big stake in Disney, Facebook and OpenAI.

  • oxytocin@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

        • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Yeah this is a pretty dumb take. If all social media is stealing your info, then they are still all stealing your info. This is not “if everyone has superpowers nobody does,” it’s just a dipshit thing to say.

    • cool@lemmings.world
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      6 days ago

      Because a lie told often enough becomes true.

      Realistically, every useful idiot is afraid to say they don’t know if a Chinese company is a spy network because it’s sooooooooo obvious even asking for proof makes them look stupid.

      Ironically, not asking for proof is what makes us stupid.

      If something is “so obviously true” yet nobody can provide evidence for it when asked, it’s probably the propaganda mill doing its job.

  • utopiah@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Unpaywalled link is convenient but so do consider subscribing if you want to support this kind of journalism :

    “404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Become a paid subscriber here for access to all of our articles ad-free and bonus content.”

  • Clot@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    I am a level 47 player, altho havent played the game for several months now due to its downfall. Guess, wont be going back

      • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        I don’t think anyone playing a game in which the main mechanic is tracking your location is the type of person to look anything up.

        • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Lol if anyone looked at my pokemon go data, they’d think I was some playboy with a private jet that visits Jakarta one day, and Tokyo the next. They also think I have insomnia and wander around in half mile circles all night. They think I have some insane government access when I visit chernobyl or tour the entirety of Italy right in the middle of their worst covid lockdowns.

          I disassembled one of my phones and physically detached the extra antenna bits for the GPS, making it extremely unreliable, and a little aluminum foil on top can start to throw my location 500ft in a random direction.

          Pokemon go provides direct feedback for gps spoofing in a way I haven’t seen available anywhere else. The game isn’t too fun, but learning where I can break GPS is a pretty fun game. The game of cat and mouse with Niantic detecting spoofers has been interesting to say the least.

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            6 days ago

            I didn’t understand how making your GPS more unreliable allowed you to be located in far away countries.

            • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              I thought the break would suggest two separate ideas, but in a sense it does help. Some spoofing can start ‘rubber banding’ between the spoofed location and the actual location, and if youre spoofing 1000 miles away, thats an insant soft ban. but if your phone never gets a proper fix on like 5 GPS satellites, you won’t rubber band.

              I mostly used the damaged GPS phone to idly increase walking distance. If I set it to charge in a basement my character just bounces all around the outside of the house and I can wake up to a cool 10km walked. There’s better options for fake walking though.

              If you’re interested in GPS spoofing, you can find a wealth of information by searching for ‘gps spoofing’ with ‘pokemon go’ tacked on the end. It takes an idea that otherwise makes you sound like a paranoid person and turns it into just cheating at a videogame.

  • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    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.