Pokémon GO Player Was the Product

> walk around your city catching pokémon > game asks you to scan a fountain. sure why not > 30 billion scans later > niantic owns a more detailed map than any government > sells game for $3.5B > spins off a spatial AI company > your pokéwalk is now classified infrastructure > delivery robots now navigate using your walks > you were never the player. you were the product.

A Pokémon GO player casually scans locations while walking around the city, unknowingly generating an enormous map for Niantic. The punchline is that the player’s location data and walking patterns became the real product, eventually supporting mapping, infrastructure, and delivery robots. It is sent as a cynical reaction to surveillance capitalism and data harvesting in games.

• @rzeczyzabawne / 23258 2026-08-13