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.
Pandora’s Tech Box opened long ago. It’s already way too late.
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Yeah, but at least it’ll all be outdated and nothing new is added.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.
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?
Because fuck you that’s why
Time to invert the colors of some extra weird porn and stuff my Google drive to the brim.
Time to finally finish setting up my immich instance properly.
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.
Deal with the stuff you have control over. You’ll never remove it all, but remove what you still can.
Yeah, we are all fucked. I’m still not going to give Google my data willingly.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Immich-frame has been on my todo list for a while. Need to get on that.
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 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
Huh? It’s a replacement for android for pixel phones. Therefore it works on… Pixel phones…
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.
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.
Timing is insane, i took out everything and put it on my NAS 2 weeks ago. Glad i removed everything.
Do you know if it was actually removed?
One can only speculate but i deleted from the trash bin also, so i did my maximum best to remove all
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.
Voiding my privacy, stealing my IP and opening me up to liabilities…and tis all legal… fuck all of you who gargled their balls and betrayed your own interests for what amounts to digital toys.
I appreciate the sentiment. One of the core conflicts I’ve had with family over the past couple decades has been their unrepentant usage of my data on these platforms. As a result, I never take or share pictures. They’ve responded over the years by casting suspicion on me, for not capitulating to the status quo, and for wanting to understand the nuts-and-bolts of technology. I’ve never shared mine nor others’ data. I worked in the data economy for about a decade and still, they’d dismiss my well-founded concerns in favor of corporate propaganda and the ego-dopamine loop. “What do you have to hide?” Dumb fucks.
Really pisses me off how flippant and careless people are towards big tech. Yet they’ll bitch and moan about how awful these companies are while forking over all their data for free.
It’s also opt in. Although I’d be surprised if anyone commenting here is actually using google photos in the first place.
Do we really trust Google’s word though? They already use machine learning on your photos to support the search feature
It’s also opt in
For now.
I’ve been dragging my feet moving to grapheneOS, but shit like this is going to encourage me to make the jump sooner than later
Join us, it just works.
Backing up/transferring stuff is my only roadblock
There’ll be quite a few of us. I have no idea of the actual demographics or whatever, but a lot of people are here just because they got shafted by reddit one too many times.
