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…
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 :
“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.”
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.I’d imagine this isn’t going to stop anyone from using it though.
Tell me again how tik tok is a Chinese spy network? When they can just BUY our information like this?
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.
We know who pushed for the TikTok ban and why.
Imagine uncontroled popular mass media.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-798115
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.
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.
Anyone that groups individuals with their government is a bigot advertising their bigotry.
Edit: looks like I upset some bigots.
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.
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).
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.
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 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. 💪
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.
Lol everyone owns your data except for you
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 glad I never played that game. Call me old fashioned but I prefer the original Pokemon games on the Gameboy, that’s all I ever played. It was fun going to friends’ houses and gatherings and trading Pokemon over Link cable. Fun times.
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
Really feeling that free market…
https://media.tenor.com/0BkvWV1SdzEAAAAM/dyinginside-suffering.gif
And what’s so wrong in this particular case?
The sauds are the last people you want to own anything you use.
I don’t get how that’s capitalism’s fault though
Bad people are allowed to do bad things as long as they have the money for it.
Because it allows people’s data to be sold off. In other words, we’re the product.
Then the “yay capitalism” phrase can be applied to any digital product, and not just to this one then
Not any, but you’re right, it can be applied to quite a few products unfortunately.
Capitalism is the fault.
