Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data
www.404media.co
A company owned by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund just bought the most popular AR video game of all time.
    • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
      302·
      3 months ago

      While true, I felt (if misguided) more comfortable with my data under California data protection laws than Saudi Arabia.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
        14·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, but we can’t have real data privacy laws in the US. Won’t you think of the shareholders?

        They’ve gotten rich off of spying on you wholesale and selling the information to anybody with cash.

        It would be rude and un-American to ask them to stop profiting off of morally bankrupt practices. Plus, they’d just say no and they own the government too.

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
    36·
    3 months ago

    Pikmin Bloom too

    Booooo. That sucks.

    I was never into Pokemon before this app but this game was fun just finding new discoveries even in my own city.

  • quickenparalysespunk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    24·
    3 months ago

    OK so instead of tracking journalists with NSO spyware and murdering them,

    they won’t even have to install NSO anymore.

    prepare to see news reports of many more mysterious murders, and obvious assassinations.

    • misteloct@lemmy.world
      8·
      3 months ago

      Next up, Saudi Arabia buys the Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel smartphone lines. Pokemon Go comes installed in the system partition for free with 1000 free PokeCoins, how generous!

      • _____@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        and then absolutely everyone I talk to will do usual ‘oh it’s not that bad , you’re over reacting’ with the additional “I don’t use it but I still have it installed”

        • misteloct@lemmy.world
          4·
          3 months ago

          My mom: “hey honey how do I uninstall this Pokeman Go app? The uninstall button is greyed out. It’s using 20% of my storage and battery”

  • NGC2346@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    3 months ago

    Jokes on them i’ve been cheating on this game with my location as some random places for a decade and lot of people have been doing this too.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
        11·
        3 months ago

        You give them too much credit on this one. This decision was likely spearheaded by some nepo appointment who is out to diversify in the worst way. When your send cousin Johnny to college in the West, you’re still not getting the best and brightest when he comes back. Whole structure of their investment fund is graft and bad decisions.

        Compare Saudis system to Norway’s sovereign fund. Instead of being politically neutral, like everything in the house of Saud it’s a patronage system. They do big headline buys like this to convince everybody above them they’re actually doing something to diversify from oil market shocks. But in this case they’re buying a dry well that’s already had it’s data sold to those who wanted it and is burdened to IP licensing that likely drains much of its micro transaction potential while also being able to be revoked if the parent company stops liking what they’re doing. They’re not going to get much from a state security standpoint from it that they couldn’t get in ways that would cost several billion less and they’re not going to get much of a return of investment on it either. But since patronage rewards are front loaded they do stupid buys like this.

        If they just wanted the data, they could’ve gotten it for much less than 3.8 billion. They likely could’ve gotten it for 3.7 billion less at least. Or just send some guys to steal it like they did with Twitter back in the day. Much cheaper.