Google confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation. That means Gemini seeing who you know and what you do. You likely have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos. They’re all exposed if you update.
tell me how to opt-out
from what I understood, you have to opt in. so by default, Gemini will not have access to your gallery. It’s just matter of time tho when will Google force this upon it’s users imo
ok thanks
uninstall it or uninstall all app updates and nuke the app data, then switch to local storage and fossify gallery or something
or throw out your phone and buy a fairphone or a phone compatible with grapheneOS
the nuclear option ngl, but my plan: am just gonna wait for my Rooted A55(stuck at one ui 7 cause i dont want to get rid of bootloader unlocking,rooted my phone so am unable to update) until it breaks, i cannot wait for the grapheneOS powered Motorola.(i hope it sells in my country!)
These intrusive app rollouts are why they want to disable open source repositories. I have google photos disabled, and use gallery from fdroid. I have to manually leave the camera to look at photos but at least if I take a pic in private it probably stays private.
Me reading this article top to bottom
Time for the sheeple harvest
Alright, I already transfered the pics to my Immich a month ago anyway, time to delete my shit outright…
Yeah. Because Google would never keep the images anyway.
Yeah, but at least it’ll all be outdated and nothing new is added. And hey, maybe in the future we could get laws that force them to delete anything older than a certain date. Would leaving them there be any better?
Easier to ask for the whole internet to be reset in order to destroy all the garbage data that’s accumulating at the bottom
How did you transfer them? Was it an annoying process?
Like the other comment said, I did a Google takeout of my photos, then used immich-go to transfer them. Was pretty painless, got it done in a few hours, probs less if I was less dummy.
Here’s the guide I followed.
My problem is that I can’t download the whole takeout before it expires. Or some fail and they only allow so many retries to download.
Does it matter what we do? There’s definitely some family member, friend, colleague who has taken a picture of you and your likeness will be processed.
It’s like people tagging you in Facebook pictures even if you don’t have an account, but worse, because that was an active step. This is fully automated.
Soon google will geomap your home interior, and have a full inventory of all your possessions. Should you resist in any way?
Say, if phones started creating a 3d map everywhere they went, and you obviously disable it. There will, at some point, be someone who enters your house and unwittingly map it out.
This isn’t about personal resistance but the futility of it as the general populace neither cares, knows or put any thought into it.
I use opt out strings in my SSID, blurred the house on gmaps, etc. Last year noticed some random person put it on mapillary, there’s other services that require other optout strings. That’s just scratching the surface.
Things are happening that I don’t even know about, let alone respond to them.
Yeah, we are all fucked. I’m still not going to give Google my data willingly.
Deal with the stuff you have control over. You’ll never remove it all, but remove what you still can.
There’s definitely some family member, friend, colleague who has taken a picture of you and your likeness will be processed.
Hah, I’m good then.
I’m a vampire.
Actually only DSLRs use mirrors. Every other camera can see you Nightwalker
Ah but you see, I’m a Clown Juggalo Vampire
Wouldn’t face paint just make you look like the invisible man in photos?
Don’t know, but in mirrors it looks funky. And I only have a Minolta Maxxum 7000. They don’t build then like they used to.
I imagine AI finds it even weirder.
DSLRs only use mirrors for the viewfinder. Would appear just fine to the sensor
Time to finally finish setting up my immich instance properly.
Pandora’s Tech Box opened long ago. It’s already way too late.
Time to invert the colors of some extra weird porn and stuff my Google drive to the brim.
An AI update that is ‘opt in’ and not ‘opt out’?
Truly Shocking!
For now! Probably a legal requirement.
Nothing stopped github from forcing me to opt out of sharing all my code with their AI, so I don’t think its a legal thing?
I think they’re considered differently in law. Your employer can claim all your works while you’re employed, and you agreed to the terms of GitHub. I’m pretty sure they can lay claim to your work as well.
Your likeness has more legal protection, I believe.
Why search for a doctor’s appointment when Google has access to all your calendar events. Why search for a party invite when it reads all your emails. And why search for a specific photo of you and your loved ones to create an image, when it sees all your photos.
They try very hard to sell this as something positive and not the privacy invasive nightmare it is.
I am 99% certain the author was writing with a purposefully sardonic tone.
If you’re able to manage a Docker container, you could consider Immich. It works great, has client apps for iOS and Android. Open Source. I’ve been using it for a few years now.
Same, I set it up a few years ago and both me and my partner have been using it since then with no issues at all, it’s completely replaced Google Photos for us.
We’ve also set up immich-frame and repurposed an old Google Nest hub to use as a digital photo frame.
Immich-frame has been on my todo list for a while. Need to get on that.
I’ve written a python script that fetches a random image from an immich album using its API, every 30 seconds and sets it as my media pc (Ubuntu) wallpaper. Serves as a frame when no windows are open. Recently updated the code to fetch images only when the desktop has mouse focus, to save unnecessary HDD reads when I’m watching something.
The main reason why I haven’t moved to Immich is backups. Storage is Hella expensive and there’s no way I store photos without a backup.
Backblaze B2 is about $7 a month per TB.
Almost every major backup solution natively supports S3 compatible storage.
Might want to reconsider back blaze. Their on the fast lane to enshitification too. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67378795
$7/month per TB is expensive as a data hoarder…
Best to scope it down to documents, git and photos.
The rest gets an onsite backup to externals.
Obviously cloud storage is convenient, but there’s definitely better value in on-site backups.
That works out to $84/year, which is about what you could get a 1TB HDD for.
2 x 1TB HDDs in RAID will be much cheaper and reasonably safe in the long run.
1TB SSDs will be even better value due to their extended lifespans, and you’d get much better speeds.
I back up to local storage and then replicate offsite to S3 nightly.
On-prem backups are great and cheap and fast and definitely plan A but a robust backup solution is going to require offsite storage of some sort. Object storage is one of the cheapest ways to do that for most situations, particularly for things that can’t be replaced like photos.
I’d do the same if I wasn’t so tight with my money lol. I prefer having multiple on-site backups so I don’t have the subscription fees.
If something bad enough happens to my house that it destroys all my backups then I imagine photos are not going to be very high on my list of priorities.
Not that difficult to setup either. If I can do it anyone with a keyboard can.
It was my first ever Docket app, and it was brain dead easy.
GrapheneOS works great for me. Not a lot you can do on stock android that you can’t do on GrapheneOS. I would highly recommend anyone looking for privacy to look into it. Very very easy to install. Just make sure you have a Pixel phone that is unlocked. I’ve been using it as my daily driver for two years now.
GrapheneOS isn’t a replacement for Google Photos though? What do you use for photo backups? (Immich seems like the obvious answer, but I’d like to know if there’s more options out there)
It let’s you run Google Photos without network permissions and with storage scopes limiting it to certain folders.
Does the photo search still work offline? It doesn’t for me. That seems like it’d be the only reason to stick with that app if you’re not using the cloud storage, otherwise I might as well just use a basic file browser.
I don’t upload my photos to the cloud, and don’t use the search function. It’s just a photo library app on the phone. It seems to do a better job of post processing the pics from my Pixel, which is why in use it.
I use google photos to pull up old pics that have already been uploaded for a long time. Google photos requires you to share your entire library otherwise it doesn’t let you view photos from the cloud, but GOS let’s you tell google photos that you’re sharing your whole library when you actually aren’t. Google doesn’t have access to any of my new pics but I can still view all my old stuff.
My only issue is with banking apps and our national ID app which is very useful. I know some work, but I haven’t seen all that I have listed, so I would have to be the guinea pig :) I actually have an older Pixel phone with a shattered screen, I was planning to have it repaired, so I guess that’s where I can test GrapheneOS safely.
It’s so easy to install! You just need to be in the 3% of smartphone owners who actually have one! EASY!
rolls eyes
That doesn’t mean it’s difficult to install though.
Huh? It’s a replacement for android for pixel phones. Therefore it works on… Pixel phones…
Pardon me, starts?
Exactly. It’s google. They’re scanning EVERYTHING. Even if you don’t use google, they probably know about you from OTHERS’ devices who are using google.
I warned most of my family and friends this was going to happen when I de-Googled and set up Immich and they all said I was paranoid.
I wish I could do that… I even learned like 70% of the knowledge I would need to do something like that… Now I just need the hardware market to crash, so I can actually fucking afford the hardware to do it.
They say you are paranoid after releasing them these news.
