The Thirty Billion Scans You Didn't Know You Made
Dutch newspaper Trouw revealed that Niantic Spatial's Visual Positioning System — trained on 30 billion scans by Pokémon Go players since 2021 — has been integrated with Vantor's military drone navigation software for GPS-denied operations. Players consented to transferable data rights in optional in-game terms, but were never told of possible military use, and once data is baked into a model, tracing it back is essentially impossible.
Read more →