I'm Not A Creepy Weirdo But PokeStop Scanning Makes Me Feel Like One

thegamer.com:

I’ve been paying a lot more attention to my Field Research tasks in Pokemon Go lately thanks to a particularly demanding Special Research assignment. Go Tour: Johto’s Masterwork assignment, Apex, requires you to complete an exhausting 100 Field Research tasks. I’ve been working on them for about an hour every day since the end of March, and I’m a little over halfway done. One of the quickest and most reliable Field Research tasks I can do everyday involves scanning my local PokeStop, a feature added in 2020 that has since become fairly controversial in the community. There are theories that Niantic is using the feature to root through your phone or to determine which PokeStops should be removed, but all I know for sure is that I feel like a total creep whenever I do them.

The idea, as Niantic explains on its support page, is to film a 360 degree shot of real-world objects that can later be digitized by the studio to create “new types of AR experiences”. I’m not sure if anyone has seen the results of all this scanning data yet, but it has definitely resulted in people angrily questioning why I’m filming their churches and businesses.

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Based on the examples on the support page, Niantic expects you to shoot 360 videos of statues, playground equipment, and informational signs. It’s likely no one would question why you’re walking in circles around a statue of Paul Revere with your camera out. They’d probably just assume it’s for a school project or an informational TikTok - everyone loves those. It’s a little different when you’re sweeping your camera back and forth across the windows of the Church of Christ, which happens to