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submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by solo@piefed.social to c/mealtimevideos@lemmy.cafe

The founder of Pokemon received funding from the CIA-backed investment firm In-Q-Tel for his mapping company Keyhole. Years later, Niantic turned Pokémon Go into a global phenomenon while using its massive player base to help build increasingly sophisticated maps of the physical world. And after selling Pokémon Go, Hanke’s remaining company, Niantic Spatial, is now openly marketing that mapping and spatial AI technology for defense and intelligence applications. Making people question if the game had deeper intentions from the beginning.

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[-] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 18 points 15 hours ago

How can the one thing that felt the closest to world peace we ever got turn out to just be the CIA fucking us about again.

[-] gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 4 points 12 hours ago

peace

the pax romana (roman giant peace project) was one of the most imperial undertakings of human history after all. "peace" (as defined by the powers that be) is just another way of saying "preserving the ruling system"

[-] CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago
[-] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 1 points 13 hours ago

Hoping you get more stars <3

[-] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world -5 points 14 hours ago

I ain't watching that but they already accomplished that with ingress. The pokestops were straight up copied over from ingress, which was a database built by users over years. Pokémon go then pushed it mainstream industrialized data collection. And honestly? I don't mind. We got better walking maps, a neat way to find points of interest in unfamiliar areas, and a way to socialize with strangers. The CIA gets some mapping and movement data they could probably get through flock cameras or something equally evil.

[-] solo@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago

I see things differently. Maybe (just maybe) industrializing data collection does not affect my way of living, and maybe, as you say, we got better maps out of this.

Still, I do care about other people, those that are directly affected by these technologies. Especially because of their military use. I believe it's important to care about others as well.

Btw and since you won't watch this, if you feel like, check out the company called Niantic.

this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
32 points (92.1% liked)

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