Joined the Mayqueeze.
Touché. If I were in your place I would still try and find another forum, even if you ended up giving all your data to Discord or something like that.
One of the reasons is adversarial policies. They will sniff out you’re using a VPN and they will throw stuff at you. Oh, weird activity from your account. Oh, change your password. Oh, we need to get a proper ID from you. Unless you’re getting $$$ betting info, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
Just out of interest: what’s on FB messenger that makes all the things you are willing to do to circumvent the grubby data tentacles worth it? I’m just asking because I came to the conclusion not to use FB a while ago and I haven’t looked back.
It turned out to be a Twitter clone from ten years ago and I realized I didn’t need that any more. If I didn’t need to reach some people who cannot overcome the hurdle the fediverse proper puts up before being enjoyable, I would not be using it today. But media popularity post-Elon-Twitter and relative ease of setup have given the platform relative heft. But it’s not open and not really federated so it’s masquerading and we don’t really want you know whose money is paying the bills behind the scenes either. If anything, the fediverse can learn from Bluesky a thing or two about onboarding people who cannot be asked to invest the time to make Mastodon enjoyable. It will take time, much more time, to get people, especially non-techy ones, to the new normal of being your own algorithm. I see Bluesky as a stepping stone in that direction that will survive in its own niche.
This verification efforts were kicked off earlier this month; this app hasn’t really launched yet, has it? I think proper implementation after a test phase will maybe come next year. I think it is too early to complain that aftermarket OS’s are being excluded. It seems to me that nobody has tackled that problem yet rather than this being a willful exclusion. And while the EU lawmakers thought it was okay to put the Googles of the world in a position where they get to be judge, jury, and executioner for the right to be forgotten, I have a feeling that GDPR and the general vibe within the EU will not allow this to only work with the help of one American corporation on the continent’s most used OS. We need to be watchful but not despairing just yet.
I think you can trust the operational side of it. I don’t think they’ve had many detrimental oopsies, the services work. I used them for a year and then jumped ship. One reason is the favorable comments by their CEO about the 47 administration, which I didn’t like. Another reason is the nitty gritty - they don’t clearly advertize what’s part of what package and I felt that was by design to get you to upgrade. And they definitely see themselves as a basket for all of your eggs. If you are moving there because you want to degoogle your life you end up just protonizing it. It’s better to spread around your stuff so you’re not dependent on one provider. If you just want a good VPN and don’t care about the rest of their services and the politics, you could make worse choices.
First thing, disable all auto backup on your phone. This is step 1 for anything.
If you have access to a computer, log in to Photos through a browser and delete images there and it won’t affect your phone’s storage. Maybe test it with an image if lesser importance before you bulk delete.
You could also move your locally stored photos to a different, temporary folder. Then delete the backed up ones in Photos. Then move the local files back.
I wouldn’t rely on the Google Takeout images. If the standard settings applied, the images will all be in Google’s compressed format. Granted, most people in the world couldn’t tell the difference. But it might be better to keep the best quality for the future.
Wow. It’s like they have discovered the concept of biases. A coffee table book of umbrella pictures would’ve had a similar effect no doubt.
For their next study they will surely test dihydrogenoxide in its liquid aggregate state for wetness.
This pretty much applies to all search engines. Because of that I don’t see the point of it being posted in this lemmy.
That’s great, I wasn’t aware of that.
The American fear of a proper ID system is puzzling to me. It’s constant fear mongering of overreach by the man and not enough appreciation of the benefits. The first one is a self-updating voter registry that eliminates the process of registering or having to check on your registration to make sure you didn’t get knocked off for no good reason. All people need to update their home addresses when they move. Another benefit is - if implemented well of course - that everybody could have a 2FA-quality chip in their pocket to allow for many services to be done reasonably safely online. The dreaded lines of the DMV come to mind. Another benefit is you could prove very quickly who you are, especially if fingerprints are on the chip, to counter mistaken identity arrests that may or may not have been instigated by a so-called AI.
So the government knows everything about you, sure. But it’s not a one-sided deal. And frankly, even if the government did not have this information on you before it turned tyrannical, it would ID you as a possible malcontent in no time. Your data is already available for sale on various data broker sites.
I realize that me preaching the benefits of a proper ID system to the Americans in times of 47 and ICE raids is a bit wonky. I am not going to speculate if the self-updating voter registry could’ve prevented 47. And ICE under 47 might find its job “easier.” But from what I’ve read and heard they haven’t exactly been detail-oriented public servants. When the rule of law breaks down everybody gets effed. And so-called illegal immigrants also have phones and use the internet so their information was also available for sale before stable genius returned to the orange office.
Of course there are dangers that need to be addressed. Access to the database needs to be tighter than a sphincter and every query needs to be logged. Every system will be abused. Checks and balances need to be there, ideally with a right to find out who looked you up and for what reason for everyone. I’d prefer a system embedded in law over internet data brokers.
Thanks for the explanation.
Some of the technical info flew right over my head in the first article. What I took from the piece is that he has valid points so far as I can see and understand it. I would say nevertheless the author was a bit biased as well. And it’s 3 years old. It may still be accurate, IDK.
I use F-Droid and have been for a while and I’m not aware of any issues this could’ve caused me. But I’m also not using it for essential systems. Not for browsers, VPN, etc. I have downloaded games, a couple of notes apps, that sort of thing. I would never recommend you get all your apps from there. It’s an addition to Google or your usual poison.
Security experts will never be happy; that’s their job. The author is also talking about your threat model. Are you okay with certain risks? The truth is also that somebody could screw you over on Google Play. It may be less likely comparatively but not impossible. So you try to jump from rock to rock hoping no alligator catches you. So far no alligator got me.
Security is one thing. I was more thinking about the pain of having to move everything again when the single provider goes bankrupt or becomes politically intolerable or gets swallowed by the kraken.
The solution should not be one single provider. Use Ente for pictures, maybe Proton* for other cloud storage and Docs replacement, look into a Nextcloud server hosted by another provider for calendar and email. Don’t put all your digital eggs in one walled nest.
*Proton is plagued by a CEO who can’t keep his mouth shut about politics. Look into that and how you feel about it before you sign up. Their VPN is good but I wouldn’t use them also for email to make switching less of a headache - and I don’t think you could use your own domain there anyway.
Why is this in privacy? Because it’s an obfuscation, which is good, or because there will be another database to be hacked, which is bad?
I was disappointed they didn’t go for a system like these three words. Or just structuring their addresses around street names and house numbers, like normal people. If you don’t know: currently, addresses are not written as 123 Example Road but mostly as Subdistrict name and number, Block number, House number. The splits into numbered subdistricts is fairly random, the block split just fairly less random, and the house numbers can be in order of building completion so number 6 can be next to number 13. Most streets have no name. It’s so utterly absurd that even if you knew the address there is no guarantee you will actually find the right place without a map provider with correct addresses. It’s a miracle not more people die because first responders couldn’t find the right address. But they don’t change this system, no, they just exchange one incomprehensible system with rando numbers and letters! Well done, the Post Office.
But you had Facebook. That’s as good as having it. They know you. Their grubby tentacles will never let go!
Whether you like it or not, they probably already know who you are too. They’re collecting shadow profiles of people who haven’t signed up through various means.
If others have posted pictures of you on a meta service, there is a good chance it already knows what you look like and they know it’s you even if you’re not tagged.
People who allow them access are just less work for them. And now they have info to train their so-called AI models. Now it’s a question about what are they going to with them. The application is wide. Create fake pictures, create fake profiles, etc. And at some point we will find out about a massive data leak that happened because the company is run by unapologetic sociopaths.
Proton has a good calendar service but if you want to change color labels you need to be on the more expensive tier - and they don’t really tell you that ahead of time. Which p’ed me off so much I moved my calendar to a Nextcloud server instead, which works great. It also got me off Keep, Drive, and I’m working on Gmail.
Will this drive the first wrongfully accused person to suicide or will it just somehow, magically, target all brown and black people? Stay tuned to see how much taxpayer money gets sunk into this tool.
Did you try this though? I’m guessing the suggestions are at least partially based on past searches and this might nuke them.
[Find in Page:] “Parent”=0 “Parents”=0 “Father”=0 “Mother”=0
It’s their job to guard their kids from this content first and foremost. It’s their job to put it into context for their children. But the article doesn’t even mention that any of this is a humongous failing of parents.
Next this commissioner will want to outlaw computer mice because they’re used to click pornographic content without verifying the age of the finger on the button. And roads because adult content actors use them to get to jobs.
The way forward is not banning or making worse all sorts of useful tools as collateral damage in this “think of the children” campaign. It is to get all adult content everywhere behind a barrier toddlers cannot break. We were fine with porn mags partially obscured on the top shelf at a news agent when that was a thing. And the salesperson making sure the customer wasn’t a minor. The solution isn’t closing all digital news agents.
And it’s quite telling that the existence of VPNs didn’t play a bigger part in this UK online safety initiative. Like it wasn’t obvious that when the west entrance to porn central was closed off, people wouldn’t naturally look for the ones in east, north, and south.
Edited typo