Google wants to use your photos and searches to build an AI storyteller

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@beehaw.org – 46 points –
androidpolice.com
23

My hate for Google grows by the day.

I removed all google photos last year, signed up to Proton for mail, drive, calendar l, password manager and vpn.

Now finalize it by:

  1. Requesting data exports of all they have on you
  2. Deleting all data you can on your account
  3. Deleting your actual Google account

Did that a few years ago, no regrets :)

i have done 1 and 2. 3 they make more difficult since you meed a google account for the playstore, unless you run the aurora store on some alternate OS. Fdroid is my spot for many apps, but sometimes for work I need access to Playstore apps

Aurora Store can be installed on any Android OS, even stock ones :)

Hmm cool, I will have to check that out

Proton Drive is pretty different from Google Photos, no?

Yes, it meant exporting out of google and uploading to folders. They have slowly been releasing new apps as the years go on so I'm hoping for a full sync app for galleries to their drive. in the meantime a selfhoated immich server is the answer to the Gphotos functions.

They should have to pay me if they wanna use my shit to train anything.

Freeloading multibillion dollar company, get a job and stay away from my shit.

Maybe this is a better question for degoogle@lemmy.ml, but:

What's a good way to get off Google Photos and Drive on my phone? It looks like Proton seems like the right fit, but compared to Google One for $20/year, Proton for $120 seems like a bit much. I guess you're paying to not be the product? Although, shoot, my VPN auto-renewed for $100 a year, so I guess I'm already paying $120...

Pcloud offers lifetime accounts. Price is reasonable if you plan to use it for 10+ years. Its basically a bet that they will still be around in 10 years.

If your willing to deal with self hosting, immich is a great alternative. Its facial recognition and search is practically on par with google photos.

The only downside is it doesnt' have photo editing, and its under active developmeant (it gets weekly updates and you occasionally need to modify docker config though they do give a warning in ui).

https://github.com/immich-app/immich

You could look into ente.io I use it and the price is quite good ($50/yr for 100GB). It's e2ee and approved by privacyguides.org. They also have a free tier if you want to try it out before buying. Their app supports auto upload of photos and videos and they are multi platform (mobile/computer). Worth looking into

My search history is going to be the thing that makes Ai kill us all.

I don't need Google to build a Randy Random to fuck with my life thank you very much.

To those saying "don't use Google photos": can google access/use my photos on my phone even of they are stored locally without backup or sync turned on?

Legally? No, they can't, not without your permission (unless required by a court or any agency allowed to do so by law).

In practice? If they can remotely change your whole OS, then they can do whatever they want to any data that's on, or can be gathered by, the phone.

Turn off all related functions for photos in the Google photos app and delete any backed up pictures. Finally, disable/uninstall the Google photos app from your phone.