I just switched to /e/os. Soooo no the fuck they can't!
God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.
Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
141–150 of 343 posts
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping. That's too low of a probability for Apple to care. The probability that YOU would do it yourself by some random series of accidents is probably orders of magnitude higher than that. Do you really think you're going to send 1,000,000 nudes to your wife without accidentall…
It's the other way around. The probability is so low that it is incredibly unlikely to happen to any given individual. You would have to be paranoid to worry about it. On the other hand the probability is so high that, when considering the size of Apple's user base, such incidents would happen regularly.
They mean that the baseline probability of someone manually doing that to themselves without AI is higher than that.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because people collectively vote for the ad model over the subscription model.
people didn't vote for shit, if they could vote they'd vote for no ads and no cost. companies like google destroyed this option on purpose. there is no reason why the vast majority of apps and services online can't be both free and ad free. if i look for tetris on the app store it's literally impossible to find a version that's both ad free and free of purchases despite the fact that i know there's at minimum 100 opt…
>there is no reason why the vast majority of apps and services online can't be both free and ad free
You can give away software, but running a service costs money. P2p messaging can be free (and signal exists), but nothing like free and adless YouTube or Facebook is going to happen regardless whether google or meta do anything to prevent it.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#144The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.
Another option although it requires using another account is using Gemini for Google Workspace.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#145The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.
Reminiscent of their heavy handed approach to disabling watch history on YouTube, even when paying for YouTube Premium. (Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)
That's a gift, the opposite of a punishment.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#146There seems to be this blatant forcing AI products on people. WhatsApp themselves have an AI feature that you can't turn off or remove. Their only advice is to simply not use it. Is it just a massive push before regulations or are they speed running annoying everyone so much that regulation is the only option?
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#147These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It’s like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.
Monetization. If people aren’t willing to pay for the products, these companies have figured out how to make the customers’ data the product.
We are paying for phones but we are still the product. Google Facebook etc were explicitly created to monetize privacy. What I search for is monetized. Who I know is monetized. Private companies will monetize what we perceive as public goods to our detriment.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp: Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the way you would have to enable any other random app to do it. Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.
Unfortunately the situation on Android is that other apps cannot do anything with WhatsApp, and there's fuck all you can do about it as a user. I shouldn't need Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas, Android is basically like iPhone now, just…
If you give users a way to compromise their own security, scammers will find a way to make users compromise themselves.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are those the only options? How about paying once, owning a specific version and that's it?
Not great for a chat app, which needs ongoing active servers and someone to fix stuff that breaks, even if you feature-freeze it.
Pretty great for a chat app used by a few billion people, a few $billion is enough to keep things running for many decades. e.g. banks do exactly this, with much more critical and complicated infra.
Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dear god! Are you sure? If I ever sensed a forkable event for Android...
Well, really the line was crossed when Google Play Services got special privileges (and third party app developers were encouraged to call on Google Play Services as the only practical way to do various things, some of which maybe should have been part of the OS). And the "assistant" crap, and whatever else. ... and GraphenOS isn't exactly a fork , but it's plugging away, fighting the good fight, doing things like ma…
Devils advocate: Google Play Services was the right solution to all the clamoring about Android fragmentation and OEMs abandoning devices by not providing upgrades.