I am a newcomer in local guides connect forum. I found out that a level 9 local guide repeatedly posted inappropriate and irrelevant photos, videos and comments in many places in Hong Kong and other cities. He posts more than 9000 photos and 3900 videos until now, so he gets higher and higher badges and achievements.
His photos and videos are totally irrelevant to the places locations. He posted contents, such as his home dining photos, game contents. Also, lots of his contents contain personal information, such as photographing strangers without their consent. I am sure that his contents violate Google Maps Local Guide policies and guidelines.
I have reported his inappropriate contents numerous times, even sent feedback to Google Maps, but Google Maps seem not taking actions.
It’s frustrating not to see quick action when we spot violations, for sure. You’ve done the right thing by reporting the content and the member. I hope @MortenCopenhagen can help you sort things out. Let’s keep this Map clean!
usually, when I see a message on Connect where a user is proudly celebrating reaching incredible heights in photo views, I get curious and check them out to understand what they’re doing so special to achieve numbers that seem to exceed the world population… Billions of view.
By now, I’ve learned that, with very rare exceptions, it’s just a waste of time.
Pure …
I’ve tried reporting them many times, flagging individual photos, selfies, family pics at parties, and so on… Here are just a few examples of these masterpieces.
(ps, this is just a selection. Usually are hundreds of identical pics or more )
Unfortunately, the new version of Connect has, by default, disabled the link to the ‘Google Maps User ID,’ so we can’t see these masterpieces anymore… yet they still get rewarded!
Nope, dear @JustJake
at my first visit to the new Connect I saw that profile picture was not available (till today I saw many that do not have any longer their image), the signature was gone (we have to rebuild) and also the link to gmaps disable.
I’m sure about this because I was working on a sw that allow me to check some data for the next TRAC Campaign and I sadly discovered that has been disabled by default.
Marco and Jake, I get so tired of reporting these guides as well.
A couple of months ago I found a guide had stolen one of my photos and posted it as is own. I Reported and Google responded immediately because it was I think in the copyright reason.
Anyway His profile is private but I have found another photo he stole from another guide, I will report again.
as I mentioned before, I used to browse photos from the TOP100 list, not just to see who was leading the rankings but also to ‘visit the world’ through the eyes of Local Guides.
However, sorry to be rude: the majority of the photos are, frankly, trash. There are thousands of repetitive photos uploaded just to boost scores or reach the coveted Level 10. (an example were what I posted before)
But that’s not even the worst part. I’ve come across some genuinely impressive ‘Holiday Reports’ with stunning photos only to discover, after a simple Tineye search, that those beautiful ‘memories’ actually belonged to someone else.
If I remember correctly, one of these cases even involved … it was not a level 1.
I noticed there’s an upcoming ‘Virtual Meet-Up’ about the new Connect platform, hosted by KarenVCHin and @ErmesT .
I hope they address the issue of getting feedback on the reports we submit. I understand they (Google) can’t reply to thousands of individuals, but there should be a way to escalate certain cases, get a response, or at least see some action taken, like the removal of fake.
Reporting inappropriate photos is indeed a mess, @MarcoDavoli , @TerryPG , mostly due to the huge amount of resources involved in scanning photos posted by more than 150 millions of Local Guides, plus a huge number of non Local Guides in Google Maps.
I personally started to raise the issue with wrong and inappropriate photos during the summit in 2017, and this is really a subject I cara about.
The point is not to get a feedback on what we report, Marco, the real point is to have them blocked. So feel free to share the profile of the spammers to me, as we have a faster way to put it on the hands of Google, and I can assure you that most of the reported ones are no longer Local Guides.
Regarding the link to our profile in Google Maps, I can only say that Privacy comes first so by default that link is not shared. But we can add it easily in our settings, if we want to make it visible.
