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Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
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Yeah, iOS is nuts.
Transfer files over bluetooth? Best go buy an entire apple product because fuck internationally recognized standards.
Transfer music to the iPhone? Gotta download one of two programs, make an apple account, and sync your entire library. Apple doesn’t support common formats such as FLAC? Go fuck yourself and convert your entire library for them.
Backup your phone to the cloud? Apple doesn’t let you select how many backups are saved so you run out of storage and get an upgrade to apple storage program for only $5.99 every other month/phone update.
I thought google was bad with their tyranny of default but the iphone 16 pro max is the pinnacle of anti user and pro consumerism. I list that phone as it is the only apple phone I have used.
I don’t think this is an iOS problem, unless the Bluesky post predates the feature that showed me this when I tried to insert a picture in OneNote:
Choosing “Limit Access…” lead to this:
So yes. Both apple and Google are doing this shit. It’s very bad at this point.
I’m genuinely considering getting Huawei with harmonyos as my next phoneI just don’t connect my phone to the internet. £4 a month for unlimited calls/SMS and that is it. Currently using a brick phone but thinking of replacing it as despite being IP68 water resistant including salt water and bleach, the mic has gone a bit shit after I cleaned it in the sink after it got a few splashes of sea water on it.
When I do get round to replacing it I am looking at the cheapest android I can find, send a few APKs to it over LAN. May let it connect to the internet once to download offline maps.
And you think it will be different? They are all doing this, because your data and info is valuable to them. Who they share the info with might differ, but they are all designed to scrape the data of your life so they can get all the seedy details and use them for whatever the hell they use it for?! Lord only knows why they want to know what I jerk off to, but that’s their problem.
I dont know that google even is the most convenient product for this anymore. The experience via google, microsoft, and amazon have all gotten so shitty that normal people I know are complaining about it.
I’m still pissed over them nuking my violent money scripts. Maybe this is a bad idea but I migrated to using a chromebook after years of using a linux laptop. Everything I do is on server so I just need the most mobile device possible that can hop on SSH. Every browser available on it besides chrome wastes screen real estate. Otherwise I wouldn’t be caught dead using chrome.
Well they blocked my violent monkey at there goes a lot of custom scripts. Because ChromeOS is so locked down I can’t exfiltrate the extension data and get it by other means. Fuck them destroying other people’s data with an update. They could have at least let people run manifest V2 extension’s own internal pages and blocked them running on websites if they don’t want V2 extensions interacting with their precious ad network.
I’m now convinced letting corporations into open source was a mistake. Google has needed the open source community to keep their browser highly accepted. But everyone who contributed to a corporate backed open source product basically helped develop and maintain product for a corporation for free.
Then you have IBM I mean Redhat I mean Fedora I mean Free Desktop Foundation intentionally killing XOrg. I know some people here may not like the XLibre fork because of preference for one side or the other in some dev drama but you have to admit it’s kind of a fucked thing that that org chain can cherry pick open source projects to die when they think other software is better for their profit calculation, even when there are people willing to contribute. Maybe IBM shouldn’t be able to do that.
Then you have Microsoft backing what was supposed to be an open source AI project. And look how open source that stayed.
I suppose if corporations want to contribute to open source that’s OK. We’ll take code. But stop letting them lead it.
Here am I, Gigachad, running LineageOS, PiHole and only using FOSS apps
Yeah, I’ve set up an Immich server last week using an old spare 250gb HDD and transfered my google photos to it…so far so good. I had been using nextcloud for a year to new pictures but the UI is not that great and I missed my old photos. Immich is great! Oh I’m also using lineage…with microg, a pihole and some obter awesome self hosting programs
So are you rolling your own cloud storage?
I’m running gos on a pixel and rolling my own cloud with nextcloud on my server. Works great.
I’ll look into nextcloud. What kind of hardware are you running it on? Any type of off-site backups?
I’m running it on a nearly decade old PC I used to use for windows and gaming back in the day. Before I ran it on the PC I ran it for several years on a raspberry pi 4 (8GB).
For offsite, I roll my own by keeping an (encrypted) hard drive stashed in my desk at work. I update it every couple weeks or so, which is fine for me.
Edit to add the PC is now running Ubuntu server, and in addition to nextcloud I run like 15 or so other services for myself and my family like
Navidrome (rips of all my old CDs and new ones I buy) Jellyfin (rips of all our DVDs) Radicale (caldav for calendar. Could do this with nextcloud but I wasn’t running it for a bit there) Joplin server for my notes Mealie for our recipes Forgejo, my private gitforge
There’s more but I can’t think of them.
Man those are some great name drops, thank you. I literally have an outlined plan to write my own Mealie equivalent because I couldn’t find anything that fit without selling me some bs service
By the way, where do you go to find these types of things anymore? Web search has been completely fubar for years
Yeah. Web search sucks these days. Here’s where I find stuff:
Awesome Self Hosted is a list of all kinds of self hosted options broken down into categories. It’s a great resource. I browse this pretty regularly to see if anything catches my eye.
The selfh.st email newsletter is also great. Weekly email with some self hosting news, new projects and projects that have updated.
And the Lemmy communities!
This is the reason FOSS has such a bad name, people will say shit like this as if what they’re doing is easy.
I guess if I won the lottery and didn’t have a job I could spend all that time and money to maintain all that shit.
I have a full time job and am working poor like many. I’m hosting all this on a decade old PC that I built back in the day. I find the time I spend on deploying and maintainig my services very rewarding, but its not for everyone, and that’s fine.
I’ve been at it for years. It takes time and effort and learning to do, and I’ll be the first to help people who post questions here to Lemmy for self hosting.
FOSS is a community like any other with good and bad apples in it. You can learn a ton from the community and take control of your own data if you want to.
I find it very rewarding and fun, but if you expect me to write a full how to every time I mention that I self host that’s a little crazy. I’ll happily answer anyone’s questions and share my knowledge but I’m not just gonna dump six-ish years of my notes in a comment.
I am running Syncthing between my devices, which is enough for me. I wondered if I should in a Synology, but now that they went full enshittification that’s not a question anymore.
Written black on white in 1998 so nearly 3 decades ago by Hal Ronald Varian, chief economist at Google, chapter 5 Recognizing Lock-In and chapter 6 Managing Lock-In with my own notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/ReadingNotes/InformationRules
Namely it’s a strategy. It does not make it “OK” morally or ethically but at least business wise, we had been warned a long long time ago. If despite this been laid out so plainly and methodically we don’t both individually and collectively, keep on using such services then we have to at least understand the consequences.
Edit: want to do something about it? Please do. Use https://takeout.google.com/ to leave then bring your own data in a system you actually manage, e.g. https://immich.app/ or whatever else better fit your need. If you still stay, you are giving Google more power to keep on using your data.
The irony of complaining about unreasonable requirements from an Apple user isn’t lost on me.
If missing the point was an Olympic sport you’d be a gold medalist.
What’s the point? criticising me for complaining about an issue that is on my grandma’s phone that I encountered?
Like yes we get apple is shit, so is android. My grandma is 90 and not loaded with cash I can’t just put her on graphene os.
This is a real way she’s having her data mined. Because other parts of the family insist on using google photos for the “family album”.
The what did you expect with apple as if everyone is a tech savy person with enough free time to maintain a custom rom and money to just straight up buy a new phone when they learn there’s isn’t perfect just ends up dismissing valid criticism.
Couple things here
You made a criticism, other people are allowed to criticize what you said.
Using the excuse of “not loaded with cash” is one I’m confused about. New or used, Pixels (Or some Motos if the Pixel is not available in your country) are cheaper than iPhones.
You seem tech savy enough to use Fedi/Lemmy, why not help them transition to a better solution for their privacy by either buying an ente subscription where they manage hosting and you dont have to worry about that, or using (free) Immich which you have to host yourself but is well worth setting up. You can even import all of your google photos albums and photos 1:1 into Immich as they are on GPhotos.
It is valid to criticize apple. They are a company who likes to taught “privacy” when they are not any better than any other phone manufacturer, no one has denied this. You just seem to find it impossible to be able to criticize both Apple, and consumers who seem to know better (You seem to be aware of Custom ROMs, as you brought it up first).
No one is trying to attack you or your family here. The OP commentor made a joke out of an observation. A valid obervation, as why would you expect Apple or Google to take your privacy in consideration. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it should change, but that change is not going to come from continuing to get fucked by them. You dont need a custom ROM to use Immich or ente. You dont have to allow companies to fuck you. The longer you let them, the harder it is to get out.
Also personal tangent, theres no “maintaining a custom ROM” unless youre building your own ROM. Most recommended custom ROMs auto-update, and dont need any more “maintainence” than an iPhone or stock android.
Did we just compare buying a certain brand of phone to being a serf? Really? No nuance with you people. Because a person being forced to work the fields to live is the same as you having to buy an iPhone.
Did we just compare buying a certain brand of phone to being a serf? Really?
The answer to this strawman of yours is “no” though.
No, I don’t think we did. You seem to be missing the point. The comic is expressing a concept, it is not comparing owning a phone with owning a car or with being a serf.
Technically it’s Foxconn that pays their wages and taxes. The comic obviously has a point though. Minus the Fairphone (overpriced for its spec and likely going to get shorter software support than any iPhone since the 5 it 5S), the options are all shit and include some form of modern slavery. IPhones just get the most attention while Samsung literally runs a country. We can’t just all stop owning modern electronical devices altogether.
Why even install this crap?!
Just because it’s super easy and well known I would assume
Easy way to backup your photos, create shared albums and it has nice “this time year ago” memories stuff.
Just like the standard app. Again, no added benefit.
And do your friends who use Android use the standard app too?
We’re talking Google photos on iOS
And that also works and is used by people on Android. But you said the “standard app” is a good alternative on iOS but do people on Android use it, so you can actually benefit from shared albums and such?
What other option is there for automatic backups, image editing and touchups, and index and searching for photos?
The standard iOS app?
They follow the same privacy standards as Google in the USA. Sure they don’t sell ads but the real issue imo is warrantless requests for that info for the government.
Apple does keep the photos and metadata encrypted in flight and at rest which I would assume is better than what Google does, but I haven’t seen Google’s policy in a while. Apple Photos Legal Page
deleted by creator
>Uses applications from the most privacy-destroying ad agency in the history of the world
>Is surprised that they don’t respect privacy.
If you use apple images or whatever the fuck it’s called then they have the same thing. Unless you do their e2ee thing and hope they don’t hold the decryption keys for that.
Who do you think you are ? You’re just extension of their machine. It’s their photos.
And their cameras. I can’t even use my nest camera anymore. Because once Google took over they requested 24/7 access to my living room camera. That’s an absurd ask. Not while it’s on, but 24/7. Fuck you Google. Keep your grimey paws off my data
Am now shopping for home camera system with external hard drive
Isn’t the point of google photos to back up your entire photo library?
speaking from experience, I could do without 700,000,000 memes saved since 2012 in with sentimental family photos
So do you want to give Google Photos access to only specific folders or something?
I think the use case of google photos is to just back up all your photos. If you want something more granular, you probably need a different app.
Pretty sure you can select the folders in google photos too
I mean I dont want to give Google photos access to any of my files, Ive since left their platform behind and switched to something more private. I feel like at one point on Android you could pick and choose which folders got backed up, but thats memories from like, Android 8 so im not positive about that.
Ah, but if you run out of space in your backup, you might think “I’ll just delete some of those photos from my backup”.
And then you go back to your device to find it’s deleted them there too!
I see that. But this is more of a use case issue than a google photos has too much permissions issue.
If you want to delete a photo you need full permissions to that photo.
Stop using Google trash. Google is evil.
Don’t use Google.
Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can’t share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can’t video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.
Other apps happily let you do all of those things. You can just Share an image from some other app. But nope, WhatsApp just refuses.
I have WhatsApp on Android and have restricted its access to my photos. Every time I want to share an image I need to first select which new photos I want to give Whatsapp access to, then select the photos again to send them. Next time I tap to share an image I won’t see any new photos in the options no matter how many new photos are in my gallery.
I can also share to Whatsapp from my gallery, which will prompt again the permission for this individual photo thing. Same.
maybe they’re serving different versions of the app to different regions or something. I am 100% sure this doesn’t work for me.
Glad they allow selective sharing on iOS
apparently this works on Android as well, see other replies :)
That is a an Android feature. A user can select the media they want to share without giving full access to the media folder. It was introduced with Android 14.
And apps have to support it, which WhatsApp doesn’t
Edit: I was wrong, see below
Not sure about that because I can use it with WhatsApp.
I don’t want to talk you into accidentally allowing access to all your photos. But I believe if you tap settings there, or if you long press your app icon to go to settings and then navigate to permissions, you will find the screen where you can choose never allow, always allow, and allow limited access which is the one you want.
Well what do you know, it worked! Thanks!
I allowed limited access and then selected nothing. Now I can send images and videos by sharing them from elsewhere.
Woohoo!
And with GrapheneOS, I can even scope contacts
Preload vs play store version?
play store. what’s preload?
So a many oems load on versions of apps from Meta and other developers as preloads on the phone so they are there day one when you first launch the OS. These versions of the apps are not subject to Play store policy restrictions around permissions and other data privacy things, and are generally far more privacy invasive than their Play store equivalents. I usually advise people to disable or uninstall preloaded versions as much as possible and try to get the Play store versions instead.
WhatsApp is awful with permissions. I couldn’t find a way to use it without giving it access to all my contacts. I installed it on the work profile and uninstalled it as soon as I didn’t need it anymore.
In many countries around the world it’s the only way people communicate. If I want to keep in contact with my family (and I do), I have no choice but to use it.
I’ve tried to get them on Telegram or Signal, no luck.
If they won’t convert to signal then oh well.
People got along fine before what’s app. Just don’t use it.
Just don’t use it.
making me repeat myself… grumble…
If I want to keep in contact with my family (and I do), I have no choice but to use it.
You have a choice. You don’t have to use it. People managed for thousands of years, you can too.
Have some principles. If they can’t or won’t change, don’t make it your problem.
They will come around if and when you take it seriously. Or they won’t, and then well, fuck em.
I have family around the world. Some said they can’t change, that’s on them. Others did and that’s fine. But nobody is going to if you cave and enable them to just keep doing it.
I’m sorry that your relationship with your family is so unimportant to you that you think it’s better to cut them off entirely from your life than to use something you dislike.
Its fine. In sorry you are so unimportant to your family that they don’t care about anything but themselves.
In the end though, there are lots of ways to communicate, and making a stand for something causes change.
Being unable to change from a data harvesting societal ill is troubling.
But if you care about any of that, why the fuck would you use WhatsApp!
Because everyone uses whatsapp. For most there isn’t really an option of not using whatsapp. Though more and more people are switching to signal nowadays, which is good to see.
That’s what you get for using a Google product.
Is this real?
I’m so used to computer-things being files I edit sovereignly on my device that I find it hard to understand the serfware.
I’m so used to computer-things being files I edit sovereignly on my device that I find it hard to understand the serfware.
I like your framing and terminology!
It is real. Even granting limited access to Google photos will lock down key functionality. I was on Android until just recently with a decade of content I still want to access on an iPhone.
I need to follow these instructions but haven’t made the time for it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120924
I can believe that, even on android their functionality has been declining for years. Can still edit (poorly), and copy on my slightly outdated version, but overall the experience is worse than before.
Android is not good either. Google Calendar requires access to all my contacts to run. Nope.
Android isn’t really that hard to like 90% de-google, you can replace most google apps with FOSS alternatives, then disable and deny all permissions to almost all google apps, even uninstall many… you can do that all without root, without even ADB.
To get to 100%, yeah, you’re gonna need ADB and root and some kind of replacement OS… but you can do a lot without it.
I might be on an old enough version that it still functions as intended without that permission (its from 2021 lol). Photos on the other hand nags you to update and eventually completely stops you from using it unless you “update”. Thankfully I can disable both apps so it’s not a big deal for me
Yup, literally went through it today. When helping my family member with their phone.
