Whistle Orga

If they do that, it just proves what we're really up against

I don't even think it mutes the impact much.

I'm not sure there's a viable way for anyone with advance notice to control the narrative.

It's not like you can mitigate a boatload of screenshots and documents.

I mean, I can't even conceive of a "worst case scenario" where they could usefully circumvent a raw data dump. Maybe I'm short-sighted.

I think there’s too much risk to lose the initial impact of the message. There’s a certain benefit to catching them flat footed and watching the response.

Like "some bad actors" doesn't work with a 900 person member list.

Eh, I'd caution you against letting bloodlust rule your decisionmaking.

And that's coming from someone who *really* loves to light shit on fire.

but y'know

I like the cut of your jib

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It’s not bloodlust. I occasionally wear the tinfoil hat that has Niantic in the bag for the res. Finding a Niantic employee on the user list is troubling and leads to questions about how much information was flowing there. Giving advance notice gives them a chance to come up with something to try to mitigate it.

He lit his jib on fire weeks ago

What do you think they would do that would stop the momentum underway?

Yeah, I'm trying to give that fear an honest shake, but I can't creatively conceive of something that would mitigate it. Help me out.

Not to change the subject, but this is a legitimate story for a Gaming website like Kotaku.

That is absolutely worth thinking about when we go to publish

For as many eyes as we can get on all of our G+ posts, they'll have it beat in the first 5 minutes

Impact like that would be tremendous

This is pretty esoteric for general audiences, though

The people that read Kotaku would eat this up

I'd pitch it.

Lol, publish it to æ

Is that still a thing?

If Kotaku actually runs with a post on this, other websites specifically catering to gaming culture would also pick up on it

I just don't know how to go about doing that in the most effective way when we come to publishing time

Niantic is already on their shit list for all of the Pokemon go disasters

Ugh.

Guys, can we get consensus that the real names and personal data don't go in the spreadsheet?

I would agree to that one hundred percent

💯

Real names is bad, it violates ToS

And in some places we're getting this wrong, wother and Julia aren't engaged any more

I have not included that, nor will I

agreed. AO for internal only ok?

AO is fine, it indicates scope

These are video game cheaters, not neonazis

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Absolutely agree.

Collection of personally identifying data is problematic even in the US. Agent name is a unique identifier. The database collects location data which is a protected class of information.

💚

Or data about EU citizens. There are new regs about to go in effect that purport to reach outside the EU

Support wholeheartedly

I agree. Maybe some lead time, but not much.

Wow. Yeah, definitely worth consideration.

Not done with backlog.


We are not in a court of law. We are not staring down the barrel of burden of proof.


Of course there will be arguments that this all might be perfectly valid. The world is full of people who believe and argue for insane things. This should not prevent one from making reasonable observations targeting rational audiences.

Just agent names and what they have their fingers in (#bot, #radar, etc.) makes sense to me.

Agree

What about a vague location in order to let us show the scale of the operation? Like state or country for EU people? Would be nice to have a map with places colored in to graphically demonstrate the scale of it.

I don’t have a problem with broad AO as in state or country. There is no need to get more specific than that. Make the map separate from the list of agent names. Just a visual to show the scope, but not tagging specific agents

Given how Niantic has a problem with player tracker, a map would not be great. Lists of areas is better

I don’t want to place them on the map, just color in the areas represented.

The location information could be excluded from the release just use the map to visualize.

I like this thought. Scope without locating players

Yep. I think that puts us in the safe territory.

Anonymous heatmap only using states or countries for outside the US?

Yes that’s the idea!

So a map of the world, with a color scale for specific states/provinces/etc.?

I'm imagining a map similar to what's seen for the electoral college. But one color, with levels of blue-ness.

I agree re not including real names but we are NOT releasing this spreadsheet, right?

If you haven't, take a look at the Radar Channels folder in the images directory. Area names and number of members in each channel -- that seems like useful evidence

I'm not sure a heatmap supports our point that RES are the creepy ones.

Hmm.

I don't think we should do a ton of processing of this data.

I agree with this statement.

Agreed.

@slykens: Wow, I'm sorta disappointed. Pittsburgh and Lehigh Valley have channels but we didn't get one here in State College! Hah hah!

No use for them in how we field.

We "play for hate", right?

👍

Not caught up yet but have to take care of real life for a bit. Will be back in a few hours.

So just the screenshots, text version of the list(s), brief explanation of what it is? I could get behind that, even though I'd love to see these bastards burn. "We're simply presenting the facts, folks. It's widespread organized cheating."

Yes No real ID

This is my angle of choice

👍

Agree

It's the moral high ground. Once the anger wears off we can say we did the right thing.

The evidence does a pretty fine job of speaking for itself.

'course I can be angry for a looooong time.

People will talk plenty about their own smurfs as soon as this gets released

The less we try to spin it, the less vulnerable we are to introducing our own biases at the outset.

Yes

@Intoku and @pongolyn, true and true.

I'd release the first pass data — names and channels — nothing else. But I don't feel strongly about it.

apologies if it was answered

@strandit, based on the other document you provided, do you think that TBG built the underlying database or do you think they access someone elses?

So, you're not in favor of the highlighting states / countries idea, you think we should do an anonymous heatmap, or just no map?

I don't think there's enough to say. The tool author is in the lists but he'd be there anyhow.

Agree with this. Let the main post/website be facts only and then let each person who shares the link add their commentary.

I expect it's gone through several iterations.

(There is a mile of backscroll and I'm at work again today. Ping if you need me for something)

so someone also mentioned before possibly identifying the exact amazon aws location of the database. Any thoughts on how to pursue that?

it seems like an important piece that would change substantially the outcome of the release.

I might skip the map entirely and have a text description of "XX countries on Y continents, and ZZ US States."

You can choose any AWS data center for your hosting.

I’d shy away from AWS on the basis that I could imagine the res scripting downloads to run up the hosting costs.

No, not for us, for what Erich asked.

I'm trying to catch up on almost a thousand messages. Apparently I missed that there are these agents on the list 😱

The screenshot Matt shared earlier was in US-East-1 which is the cheapest and most commonly used chunk of AWS.