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Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#41

Post by jrochkind1 »

Mizza wrote: post #18

Google are a deeply, deeply unethical company and all of their employees are complicit. On a more practical note, I live in apartment above a restaurant. My phone now asks me to review this restaurant every time I come home and wants me to post photos I take in my apartment to the restaurant's map page. Now that OSM data is as good as Google and Maps.Me is a good enough client, my next phone will be completely de-Goo…

Is there really no way to turn this off? (I don't have an Android phone).

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#42

Post by saulrh »

I'm going to be completely honest here: If these things were behind a configuration option and defaulted to off, I'd have gone into my phone and turned that option on. I want to leave reviews for restaurants as I'm walking out of them - it serves the common good and doing it immediately is better for memory. I want to remember to download offline maps when I'm about to go somewhere where I won't have coverage. My memory is terrible enough that I can't do those things myself. Google obviously can't provide this service out of the goodness of its heart, of course it's going to have self-serving tweaks added on, but I consider those to be easily worth the value I get out of Google Prosthetic Associative Memory.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#43

Post by Supermighty »

fenwick67 wrote: post #23
fwdpropaganda wrote: post #10

Two things that happened to me: A) I walk into a store, get a notification from google photos asking me "I see you're at store X, wouldn't you like to take some pictures?". Possibly to use as part of google maps. Thinking back I think this is when I started de-googlifying my life. B) I get a notification from google maps asking me "you're travelling to place X soon, wouldn't you like to download an offline map, just…

#1 is so obnoxious. No Google, I won't do free work for you. At least offer me some store credit.

I was taking photos of locations I visited. Google Explorer's program offered free 100GB of Google Drive space once you reached a certain level. About a month after I started they changed the promotion and took away the Drive space. So I deleted all my photos and stopped taking new ones.

Never work for free.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#44

Post by kuschku »

laurent123456 wrote: post #13

What are these "Google" notifications? Is that a "Google" app generating them? If so, can't it be disabled or uninstalled? I don't have this on my Android phone but I've uninstalled or disabled everything Google related. And if you don't want to be tracked, you can also switch off Location History.

On newer Android versions, "essential" Google apps can not be disabled or uninstalled anymore.

As this was downvoted last time I made this statement, and claimed to be a lie, this time I took screenshots on a Nexus 5X running Android Oreo 8.1 official build, showing that this is the case: https://imgur.com/a/AVmLN

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#45

Post by hateduser2 »

cloudwalking wrote: post #31
Mizza wrote: post #18

Google are a deeply, deeply unethical company and all of their employees are complicit. On a more practical note, I live in apartment above a restaurant. My phone now asks me to review this restaurant every time I come home and wants me to post photos I take in my apartment to the restaurant's map page. Now that OSM data is as good as Google and Maps.Me is a good enough client, my next phone will be completely de-Goo…

I'm sorry, what makes Google so "deeply unethical?"

Well I feel like it’s kind of easy to guess what they mean. I’m sure it’s related to spying and data hoarding and tracking and privacy issues and their incentives are highly misaligned and encourage unethical anti consumer behavior.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#46

Post by LoSboccacc »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #16

> We need some human help So pay me.

they do, in a sense: each review and picture nets you levels and badges, I'm unsure what those are used for except bragging rights, but you can see them in reviewers pages.

https://support.google.com/local-guides/answer/6225851?hl=en

funny that fake internet points is enough motivation to extract hours of work

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#47

Post by izacus »

Angostura wrote: post #36
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #15

The idea that you'd have any location privacy while carrying around a cell phone is absurd. Both iPhone and Android devices record location history, and your network provider always has a rough guess of where you are. It may be annoying that Google is very persistent about trying to build its maps dataset, but the suggestion that it's not happening on other devices is crazy.

On iOS Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services Then turn off everything in the Product Improvement section, turn off Significant Locations and anything else in there you don't want. Done

Same thing on Android is under Settings -> Google -> Location -> Location History

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#49

Post by ng-user »

laurent123456 wrote: post #13

What are these "Google" notifications? Is that a "Google" app generating them? If so, can't it be disabled or uninstalled? I don't have this on my Android phone but I've uninstalled or disabled everything Google related. And if you don't want to be tracked, you can also switch off Location History.

This is Google Maps. The option to turn these notification types is under the Notification settings for Google Maps.
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