Dear Pikmin Bloom and Niantic player communities,
Hello everyone,
Recently, while playing and reviewing Wayspot photos and postcard galleries within the game, I noticed a concerning and increasingly severe trend of malicious manipulation. Some players have been utilizing automated tools or organized community coordination (such as mass posting and driving shares on external social platforms like Threads) to artificially “mass-like” images that clearly violate official guidelines within a very short timeframe, thereby polluting the in-game postcard ecosystem.
I am hereby lodging a formal protest and a specific loophole review, earnestly urging Niantic and the community to face this issue head-on and implement stricter penalty mechanisms:
- Why do malicious AI-generated and rule-breaking photos pass automated reviews?
Take the famous Icelandic landmark Árneskirkja Hin Gamla as an example (as shown in the attached image). On September 3, 2026, a fake photo with strong AI-generated traces and digital brush textures (such as unnatural snowscapes and animal placements) was uploaded there.
Deliberate violations: Photos of this type completely violate Niantic’s clear guidelines regarding authentic photography, the prohibition of excessive post-processing, and close-ups of animals. However, the system’s automated review mechanism easily allowed it through, resulting in non-compliant content directly occupying prime positions on the game screen.
- Ecological damage caused by community-coordinated “rapid mass-liking”
As clearly seen in the Threads screenshot from the attached image, malicious actors use posts to share these rule-breaking postcards, inducing a large number of players to follow the trend, repost, and collectively mass-like them within the game. This causes non-compliant photos to surge and accumulate dozens or even hundreds of likes within a single day, directly squeezing out high-quality real-world photos taken by normal players. This is no longer a simple difference in aesthetic preference; it is organized ballot-stuffing and community manipulation behavior.
My Strong Demands and Reform Suggestions
To completely eradicate this unhealthy trend of “farming likes with rule-breaking images,” I strongly call on the official authorities to implement more thorough penalties and technical adjustments:
Severely punish rule-breaking accounts and sequential email/bot syndicates: For players who maliciously upload AI-generated images, stolen photos, and those long-term involved in multi-accounting or like-farming/ballot-stuffing, the officials should proactively conduct comprehensive account audits (including checking for sequential email characteristics or automated bot traits) and impose severe penalties to curb this maltense.
Core Demand: When deleting rule-breaking photos, simultaneously make the Image URL permanently invalid! This is the most important and effective fundamental solution. In the past, many players worried: “If a report succeeds in deleting a rule-breaking photo, won’t the ‘rare collectible postcards’ we already collected in the past turn into a blank screen?” Yes, it should turn blank! Only by making the image URLs of deleted rule-breaking photos completely invalid, and making all postcards in player inventories containing that image simultaneously invalid or display as corrupted, can we completely strip away the motives of malicious individuals who use uploading “animal/AI rule-breaking photos” to create rare souvenirs for showing off or profiteering. When the vanity and collection value brought by rule-breaking photos drop to zero, this phenomenon of malicious leaderboard manipulation will naturally disappear.
I earnestly ask everyone to pay attention to this issue together, and hope that the relevant units and community administrators will face this loophole squarely, returning a clean and fair gaming environment to all players.