cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1185607/how-pokemon-go-players-unknowingly-trained-military-drones-i-was-just-playing-a-game
Players of the game Pokémon Go scanned their environment for years for extra points. With the help of these billions of scans, an extremely precise navigation system has now been developed for military drones and robots, among others.
When you’re in control of the software you can decided what it does: what data should be sent back (if any). Here a server hoster may refuse you if you do not collect data but that’s a much harder sell when all users are in control.
[Even harder when the server code is also freed, and anyone can host it]