Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, has been sluggish to answer popular concerns about the game’s ability to force players into close quarters with other humans in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak. In reaction to what they view as Reddit’s inability to effectively control the dissemination of Covid disinformation in response to the article, the game’s Reddit sub, r/pokemongo, has converted itself to ‘private.’ The front page of the sub currently reads:

“We have gone private in protest of Reddits inaction against Covid misinformation. As our users know Covid directly impacts this gamer because Go is played outside in real life with others. We have stood against Covid misinformation publicly before, and stood with the community when they petitioned Niantic to return the 80m distances so we could continue to play safely. To that end, we will stay private until NoNewNormal and similar subs dedicated entirely to misinformation are banned.”

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Niantic took the odd choice to withdraw the increased interaction distances for Pokestops and Gyms in the United States and New Zealand at the beginning of August. Whereas it had been increased globally from 40m to 80m in response to the start of the pandemic, it was reduced to 40m in those two countries, just as both were seeing new surges in Covid cases. Players clearly responded furiously, but it took Niantic a befuddling three weeks to withdraw the apparent bad concept.

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Obviously, this resulted in a lot of debate on the subject on the game’s Reddit channel for most of August, which resulted in the entrance of a number of people from less…scientifically oriented Reddit subs, such as NoNewNormal, Conspiracy, and Conservative. Clearly, this has resulted in a lot of distracting debate about topics unrelated to POGO, and as a result, the community has opted to go silent in protest against Reddit. 

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They claim that it will remain hidden until Reddit removes the NoNewNormal sub and dramatically improves its moderating of Covid disinformation on others.