Google's Niantic Labs Sorry Over Death Camps In Smartphone Game 135
New submitter LunaticTippy writes: For those unfamiliar with Ingress, the game has GPS coordinate portals that correspond to real world locations, players then use smartphones to battle for control of these portals. Many public locations with historical or artistic interest are submitted by players. It turns out some of the sites were located within concentration camps such as Dachau and Sachsenhausen. NBC reports: "In a statement to The Associated Press, Niantic Labs' founder John Hanke said the company has begun removing the offending sites from the game. He said 'we apologize that this has happened.'"
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Locations are user submitted.
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I'd also be proactive about Mecca.
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Yes, but Niantic reviews the submissions and either approves or denies them. There's a whole section on G+ Niantic setup for handle Portal Appeals (when Niantic denies your submissions, you can post the photo, location, and why you think it should be a portal. Other players can vote yes or no on it, and with enough votes Niantic will review the submission again).
In the end, Niantic (or whoever they hired.. unpaid interns maybe?) are the ones who either approve or deny the portals that go into the game.
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Funny how they said "We are sorry that this happened" and not "We are sorry that we did this". i.e., they are not taking responsibility.
It's better than the typical corporate non-apology "We're sorry that this may have offended some people".
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't really "do" it, they just missed what it was when they approved it. And it should be pointed out that the whole point of locations is that they be basically what the death camps are today- aka, public places, museums, etc. It's entirely possible that they were not added to troll, but simply on the idea of "hey, people are around here to learn, lets put a portal here because it is interesting for the players who come here".
Again- Ingress portals are placed in historical and public areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"The gameplay consists of establishing "portals" at places of cultural significance, such as public art, landmarks, monuments, etc."
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And it should be pointed out that the whole point of locations is that they be basically what the death camps are today- aka, public places, museums, etc.
Indeed. The whole point of the game is to get gamers outside and walking and visiting interesting and significant places. (One game slogan is "it's time to move".)
The problem isn't that the location is in the game. The problem is that some players act like complete arses, ruining those locations for everyone else. In retrospect, this is an obvious point.
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the whole point of locations is that they be basically what the death camps are today- aka, public places, museums
No. As a funny side note, it's amazing how some officials go out of their ways to avoid labeling these places as "museums". The new expression "documentation centeres" was coined for museums in non-museum-worthy places.
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And it should be pointed out that the whole point of locations is that they be basically what the death camps are today- aka, public places, museums, etc. It's entirely possible that they were not added to troll, but simply on the idea of "hey, people are around here to learn, lets put a portal here because it is interesting for the players who come here".
That could be, or they could have actually known there was a concentration of Jews in the opposing faction in their area. We can't tell from here. Given that this is the internet we're talking about, I'd give about even odds.
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The game does have moderation for location submission. It can take weeks to get a "yes" or "no" response once you've submitted a photo, description, and GPS location.
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+1
Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Someone near me managed to get a portal of a parking lot approved. The portal is in the middle of the woods. Took them like two days to reject my request to move the portal to where it actually was.
Another portal near me is a car. The car has sinced moved. Reported multiple times, and nothing from them.
The real news is that apparently it's possible to get Google to moderate portals at all.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have outstanding submissions anywhere from 6 months to a year right now. I just got one denied that was just over 6 months old.
Of course, they'll take graffiti on the side of a dumpster, but they won't take actual non-death-camp historic landmarks.
As I keep saying, their approval process is handled by a randomizer. No human can be as pathetic as their approve/deny decisions have been.
Hell, I tried to have a portal removed from my ex-wife's house. I went out to visit our daughter, and while I was trying to explain the game, I turned on the game and it was on the house. The picture was from a commercial property miles away. They refused to remove it.
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Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
Location submissions in Ingress have always required approval.
Similarly you could request locations be removed for a variety of reasons - generally because they were on private property, were out of reach to the general public, etc. Sadly, sour grapes and even more sour players were more often the cause. A portal at my place of business was removed ostensibly because the garden was for patient recovery and meditation. Site management never even knew the game existed, let alone that Ingress players were disrupting meditation in the garden. The real reason a portal at my place of business was removed was that the opposing team didn't like a cluster of portals that was in the lap of the opposition -- so they faked a complaint to get it removed.
Bitches gonna bitch.
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Give people the ability to create things tied to real world locations without any sort of moderation controls, act surprised when they pick controversial locations. Trolls gonna troll.
If only Google had -- oh I don't know -- some sort of sophisticated mapping software or database where they could flag GPS locations ...
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Because everyone knows the right and moral thing to do, is quietly pretend that concentration camps don't exist and never have.
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You seem to be arguing with your imagination.
Good luck.
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Ingress does have moderation controls. Every single submitted portal has to be approved by Niantic. It often takes 9-12 months before new portals are approved/denied. Basically, Niantic staff approved these portals.
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Because they were one of the results of fascism, but fascism seems to be coming back into fashion (see: US, UK, NSA, GCHQ, secret courts, 'crony capitalism', destruction of encryption/anonymity online, destruction of private property rights, destruction of right of conscious, domestic paramilitary SWAT for non-violent misdemeanor offenses, etc etc etc) so being reminded of them makes those wishing to control what others do uncomfortable to think about
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right of conscious,
Gah! Should have been "conscience". Curse you, autocorrect!
Denialist (Score:5, Insightful)
So is removing them and pretending those places dont exist is a better solution?
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Is it educational? "Go visit here and get points!"
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Definitely.
A guy I work with plays this game. He's the kind of person who would rather sit home on his couch playing games than learn anything. But with this game, he's had to visit plenty of local monuments and historic locations.
The kind of places that teachers would drag kids to, but due to this game, he's been there voluntarily.
The smartphone game trivializes Auschwitz. (Score:4, Insightful)
So is removing them and pretending those places dont exist is a better solution?
It hurts my head when a geek asks a loaded --- smartass ---- question like this and gets modded up +5, Insightful.
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Again from Wikipedia: Ingress portals are placed at:
"The gameplay consists of establishing "portals" at places of cultural significance, such as public art, landmarks, monuments, etc."
So yes, it sort of IS the university of human learning, if that means that almost every interesting place you might go to has portals all up in it. If you go to a portal, the game says, here's some stuff, but because you physically WENT there, the point is that you are somewhere of interest, such as a museum. It's not "just
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Uhh.. As someone who's played the game in multiple cities around the world, I have to say you're really stretching it calling it a "University of human learning".
Portals are often things like a painted mural of a local business. Even the historic ones often have little or no educational material attached to them. Universities have REAL information in them. Ingress is 75% game, 24.9% exploring new places, and .1% learning.
It's very definitely a silly game where you might find something new and cool, but
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I've been to Dachau, and I play ingress. Believe me, Dachau is NOT the kind of place where people should be playing a damn game in where you try to control other peoples portals. It's a very real place, and while one concentration camp is enough for one lifetime, I'd still hate the thought of people running around trying to earn points in a game while visiting Dachau where such horrible things happened.
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I can not believe this has not been said thus far in the thread. I must remedy this...
Hitler!
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Who's going to approve their reasons for going there? A self-appointed Gauleiter like you?
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Who? Not an individual, but the rest of the civilized world.
We've collectively decided to maintain those sites for a purpose. We've also collectively decided what does and does not constitute disrespectful behavior at those sites.
You're upset that you can't do whatever you want, wherever you want, without facing social consequences for your actions. You hear this sort of nonsense from school kids trying to defend their poor behavioral choices.
You wouldn't send text messages in a movie theater, would you?
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He's as bad as the Nazis, isn't he?
Ingress. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "goal" of Ingress is to get people outside and walking around and looking at the real world.
A lot of players use it trolling around in their cars to hit as many points as possible, but a lot of fat nerds like myself have walked around a lot of parks we might not have otherwise gotten off our fat asses for.
I'd have rather seen a historic site -- no matter the subject -- than a few graffiti mural-ed alleys I've wandered down here in Phoenix.
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Re:Too late (Score:4, Funny)
The damage has been dough, you hurt my feels you insensitive bigot! Reparations for me now!!!
well... how about a cookie? :)
It goes into the quintillions (Score:2)
well... how about a cookie? :)
Or how about a few quintillion cookies [dashnet.org]?
I still don't get this (Score:4, Insightful)
Again why are they needing to apologize for approving portal locations for historic areas?
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Something to do with NAZI's, gay rights, or slavery is the simplified lazy-mans method of being outraged. As long as everyone is shallow, nobody will notice how simplistic and shallow your outrage is. So in essence the simplistic shallow people pat themselves on the back for being so simplistic and shallow.
Don't see it yet? Go look at just about anyones facebook feed. A bunch of people patting themselves on the back for gay marriage in the U.S. even though 5-n
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Are you that socially retarded that you can't see that leading people to a hallowed place in order to play a completely unrelated game is tasteless beyond belief?
If by "socially retarded" you mean not so fucking shallow, then yes.
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Anywhere in Ingress you go, you press a few buttons on your phone for the gameplay. Because the actual point of the game is to get the out-of-game you to the place, this is pretty much the entire point.
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I played Ingress for about a year, I know how it works, After the first time you visit a site you learn about it, then you spend the next few months trampling all over it trying outdo the other team and getting your GPS to sync up. You simply bury your face in your phone and wander around blindly mashing your screen. This is fine at a public park, but entirely inappropriate at a holocaust memorial site.
I'd like "What is history?" for $500, Alex. (Score:5, Insightful)
When did learning about history or using historical figures, locations or groups in games or other activities become verboten? If we are to apply this crap objectively and consistently, then we need to make sure we ban everything that anyone anywhere ever could possibly be offended by, just so nobody suffers from undue loss of self-esteem or panic attacks or feel that their positions are not getting equal respect.
Books with any controversial name? BANNED
TV shows that say certain trigger words? BANNED
Cars named after people or places that someone fears? BANNED
Documentaries about terrible events in history? BANNED
Where, pray tell, does it end? When did people lose all ability to process input on a rational and contextual basis? /smh
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BANNED
BANNED
BANNED
BANNED
Geeze, ya gotta quit after the tenth espresso man.
See below for my very own offensive statement. I wrote it because I know it will offend some folks. I don't care, and not likely it will be BANNED.
The difference? If we don't care if we offend people, it doesn't matter. Bill Maher has made a career out of purposefully offending people. Network television was worried about him offending people. HBO wasn't So he's busy agitatin' which is what he do best.
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When did learning about history
There is no learning, it's just a game. A stupid game at that.
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The game is to take you to a place, man. That's not stupid. It's not like you have to go sit in a museum and run a WoW raid or something. The gameplay is minimalistic on purpose.
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Play your game everywhere else, just show some respect to people who actually gave their lives for your freedom.
Paywalled (Score:2)
Please explain to all of us how the privilege of reading up on the subject is worth $12 for the first article and then $29 per month if we forget to cancel afterward.
Damage control (Score:2)
What exactly is a "death camp"? (Score:2)
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Dachau [kz-gedenks...-dachau.de]
In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41.500 were murdered
Sachsenhausen [wikipedia.org]
Some 30,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, pneumonia, etc. due to the poor living conditions.
There seems to have been a lot of death in both those camps.
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There was a lot of deaths in concentration camps, but they weren't designed as extermination camps.
Wikipedia, as always, is rather useful for a definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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How many people have to be murdered before you think playing games on site is inappropriate?
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Not really relevant. "Playing the game" is going to a place of historical significance. The gameplay is a few buttons to "hack the portal". The actual point is that you are somewhere of interest, such as a museum. Given that memorials open to the public are unquestionably of historic interest, this is interesting.
Obviously they deleted them to avoid the bad press, but this sort of thing is sort of the point of Ingress- the places you go are ideally educational, beautiful, interesting, something. If yo
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I can only imagine the
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Did they play Concentration at these camps? (Score:2)
They weren't extermination camps, but they weren't "sit around and play card matching game [wikipedia.org] all day" camps either. Perhaps we can split the difference and call them "detainment with criminally inadequate nutrition and enrichment" camps.
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Denial (Score:2)
We should not ignore historic events just because they don't paint a rosy picture of humanity: the inquisition, the holocaust, the armenian genocide, etc.
Spain will soon approve a law to grant citizenship to the jews expelled from Spain in 1492, this is the right attitude to correct mistakes, not to ignore them. I wonder if Germany will follow.
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The exact opposite of what Niantic should do (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire point of portals is that they are located at physical locations that have historical or cultural significance. https://support.google.com/ing... [google.com]
The list of the top ten most historically and culturally significant sites in the whole world would include the concentration camps.
This is political correctness at its worst, where in seeking sensitivity it in fact hides atrocity.
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Wow, commemorating an outrage makes me suck? You have a very, very screwed up worldview.
oh I get it (Score:2)
deniers? (Score:1)
How could this be offensive? The whole point is to call out places of cultural or historical significance. The only people that _should_ be offended by this would be holocaust deniers.
Who cares? (Score:1)
Are real people actually getting killed in the game? There are all kinds of games that include violence, murder, theft, assault, robbery, drug dealing, etc.
People who are offended by this should really give their head a shake. There are actually real people in the world who are suffering as a result of real violence and terrorism. I wonder if they speak out about real world problems - or do they just bitch and whine about video games?