tell me how to opt-out
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
585 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
84043 readers
8782 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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
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.
Yeah, we are all fucked. I'm still not going to give Google my data willingly.
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.
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.
load more comments
(5 replies)
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?
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
Time to finally finish setting up my immich instance properly.
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.
Time to invert the colors of some extra weird porn and stuff my Google drive to the brim.
Pandora's Tech Box opened long ago. It's already way too late.
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.
load more comments
(12 replies)
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
An AI update that is 'opt in' and not 'opt out'?
Truly Shocking!
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.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Time for the sheeple harvest
Does it matter if you don't update? I imagine they already have it on their servers, which is where I imagine the photos are mostly processed.
Since decades, Google Photos is cloud storage. Update or no, they already got your photos for this.
The more offensive part is, Google Photos is not only the default image viewer on (Google's) Android, but (Google's) Camera app will only open pictures in it too. So it's cloud crap that's also literally programmed into a lot of people's cameras.
Check out https://github.com/CaramelFur/GPhotosShim which stops GCam from using Photos. This is why my gOS uses GCam with network denied (because it works way better on Pixels than the OSS equivalent).
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›