I have been regularly testing o3 in terms of geoguessing, and the first thing it usually does is run a Python script that extracts EXIF. So definitely could be the case

I took screenshots of existing 20 year old digital photos ... so ... no relevant exif data.

o3 was quite good at locating, even when I gave it pics with no discernible landmarks. It seemed to work off of just about anything it could discern from the images:

* color of soil

* type of telephone pole

* type of bus stop

* tree types, tree sizes, tree ages, etc.

* type of grass. etc.

It got within a 50 mile radius on the two screenshots I uploaded that had no landmarks.

If I uploaded pics with discernible landmarks (e.g., distant hill, etc.), it got within ~ 20 mile radius.

As a Ukrainian who lived through all this stuff right in the middle of the events (Luhansk region, 2014-2016, occupied territories), I tried to resist the urge to reply but could not.

The examples you provide are not an existential threat, but an excuse for an opportunistic expansion due to Ukraine being weak. There is a plethora of objective evidence without me providing any extra anecdotal information.

What I wanted is to give you a slice of my personal perspective. I lived through this shit, my classmates were raising “LPR” flags on my city’s admin buildings, I crossed the demarcation line multiple times during both hot and cold phases of the pre-2022 conflict and have seen a lot of stuff.

I guess the main issue was that Ukraine was bad at public relations and communication (still is btw, plenty of recent examples), and they just were not able to counter the information war at that crucial point, and then many times more. When the Russians started bringing in military equipment and training locals, a lot of local populace had their mental timeline already messed up by Russian propaganda because historically, nobody in that area really watched the Ukrainian media. In reality, they were the first to escalate the conflict while Ukraine was still too slow and incompetent and preparing to respond.

During the hot phase, where was A LOT of military incompetence that caused many civilian and military casualties. There were also certain instances of internal power struggle within “LPR” that is not talked much about, it also had civilian casualties.

But after the hot phase of 2014, the conflict literally froze. There was no shelling of cities, no casualties besides people stepping on mines. The whole 8 year genocide thing was fake, and everybody who actually lived there knew that. They were doing business across the demarcation line, huge numbers of people and cargo traveling, all while both sides were shooting their daily quotas of artillery shells into the field.

In 2020-2021 (!!!), while literally everyone was fine with status quo and busy with Covid, the “LPR” and “DPR” started preparing for draft, enlisting people (not drafting) etc. What happened in 2021-2022 was another Ukrainian loss from the information war perspective, where Russian propaganda switched to a new narrative and succeeded in reeducating the local population (including my relatives), where these “8 years” appeared. The whole thing was so comically rushed and staged that it felt surreal.

I guess, the mainland Russian audience was a-OK with this theatrical interpretation which was the main goal. Meanwhile, the borders of “DPR” and “LPR” were closed a week before the 2022 invasion and they already started grabbing literally every “ethnic Russian” on the streets to go to war.

The interesting thing is that it does share your location when you open that screen even before you click that button. I don’t know why they did it, but it is definitely a shady thing.

I got both my AWS and Amazon accounts banned a few months ago, because I was living in Eastern Ukraine and ordered some books there in 2014 (before the postal services stopped working). Apparently, that address was saved somewhere and now it is under sanctions, even though I left that place in 2014. My Kindle library is gone because Amazon's support can't do anything about it.

I was mostly ignoring the fact DRM exists, because what could go wrong? Well, it was a refreshing reminder that our "R" in "DRM" are much more fragile than we got used to think when nothing bad happens for years. At least until we forget about it once again. That's it folks, gotta go buy a few limited use licenses on Steam while they're on sale!