Pokémon Go’s location tracking aimed to compile one of the most detailed social graphs

Evidence

These requirements suggest that Niantic would conduct its operations in ways that establish substantial surplus supply chains aimed at scale and scope. Indeed, the company’s “surveillance policy” signals its demand for behavioral data in excess of what is reasonable for effective game operations. Just six days after the game’s release in July 2016, BuzzFeed reporter Joseph Bernstein advised Pokémon users to check how much data the app was collecting from their phones. According to his analysis, “Like most apps that work with the GPS in your smartphone, Pokémon Go can tell a lot of things about you based on your movement as you play: where you go, when you went there, how you got there, how long you stayed, and who else was there. And, like many developers who build those apps, Niantic keeps that information.” Whereas other location-based apps might collect similar data, Bernstein concluded that “Pokémon Go’s incredibly granular, block-by-block map data, combined with its surging popularity, may soon make it one of, if not the most, detailed location-based social graphs ever compiled.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 996

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader surveillance-capitalism framework’s claim that consumer apps operate as surplus supply chains — Niantic’s data demand exceeds what game operations require. — connects to: Large social platforms function as aggregators of niche tracking services — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 542; Pokémon Go pioneered automated mass conditioning of behavior into prediction markets — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 979; Pokémon Go directs behavior modification toward targets players never consciously perceive — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 985 (+2 more)
• CANDY: The fact that Pokémon Go was quietly building an unprecedented location-based social graph is a fun, tweetable nugget about a beloved consumer app.

Broader Connections

• Pokémon Go functioned as a covert surveillance-capitalism apparatus to herd players toward commercial locations #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1000
• Games like Pokémon Go serve as experimental prototypes for broad behavioral modification infrastructure #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1002