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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

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Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#331

Post by Barbing »

anton-c wrote: post #317
Barbing wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I've had my youtube watch history off for years. It still knows what I like. Hence why I open a new private browser for each session.

Have you seen EFF’s Cover Your Tracks or other browser fingerprinting test sites?

I’m under the impression my use of private tabs & blockers & iCloud Private Relay is nearly useless when browsing sites of any sufficiently large company, and I won’t lie and say it’s not somewhat frustrating and disturbing.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#332

Post by Barbing »

Macha wrote: post #220
michaelmrose wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make a list of demographic fitted choices based on info on the user. One wonders if you couldn't whip up something that would whip up a list of choices by operating locally only on the users history returning just a list of things to show on the page and forgetting it when the user closed the tab.

Honestly having occasionally glimpsed the logged out YouTube page which appears to do this... I'm glad that I don't have to deal with that either. As for what they should do, I think populating the homepage from the subscriptions list (either literally as an ordered list or by some algorithmic "watch time vs average watch time for this creator", I don't care) would be preferable.

Great idea!

If the goal were anything but discouraging disabling watch history, they’d take care to design a page not so strikingly barren.

Video categories, subscriptions, trending searches (not saying we’d WANT that), Google-curated selections, recommendations based on user choices (“what kinds of videos should we show you, want daily news/sportballs/music recs?”)

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#333

Post by bapak »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #167
bapak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not the best example since Siri has been misunderstanding us for many, many years. You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late

> You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late Why make up stuff like this? Siri confirms everything that sends data.

"Too late" is tongue in cheek, but the point stands. Apple has been comfortable shipping crappy products for as long as I can remember. Even Jobs was pissed at them shipping MobileMe in its sorry state.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#334

Post by throwaway290 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #50
throwaway290 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome What is that power? Honest question...

Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart home…

> Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens

I honestly thought tapping screen to pick a pizza and all toppings you want etc is the convenient option but OK. Maybe it's a difference between people like me who like to browse menu and people who like to inquire with the waiter.

Booking a flight is a challenge (starting with captchas and hidden options they require opt out) for a living person already and expecting an LLM to do it is very far fetched. Planning a road trip, that's just robbing yourself of fun.

But because I asked & you answered I should say "thanks not for me". Maybe if I am Elon Msuk at some point and don't care about it falling for some dark pattern than minuses me $1k by accident I will be fine using assistants but then do I choose bots over living people in that scenario? Doubtful...

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#335

Post by saidinesh5 »

ilpianista wrote: post #285
fransje26 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to have good resources detailing the process?

Pretty much what I summarized back in 2019: https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-synct... Nowayadays Syncthing is no more maintained due to some PlayStore drama, but Syncthing-Fork is a good replacement.

Thank you for this. Just adding this here:

There seems to be an issue with recent Android apis that make file access painfully slow that it wasn't able to sync my data in 1 full day. Enabling the "Case Sensitive FS" option on the folder helped a lot.

https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/1088#...

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#336

Post by pkilgore »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #118
pkilgore wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article states, "After turning it off, Google will still retain your data for up to 72 hours to "maintain safety and security of Gemini Apps" and allow Gemini to respond contextually."" Which means, AFAICT, it doesn't matter if you turn it off or not, Google still collects information and stores it for 72 hours as part of the core functionality of the operating system.

That's if you used Gemini with this feature. And if you haven't...?

I think we are reading separate implications from the same statement.

I (and others, and Google has not disabused anyone of this when asked), understand that to mean "Gemini always has access to a sliding 72 hour window of all your data, even if this feature is off".

You think it means: "Once you turn it off, Gemini has access for another 72 hours then it has no access".

The later is less alarming for sure, but the former appears what is actually happening.

Previously "off" meant "off". Now "off" means "only send/retain data for 72 hours".

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#337

Post by 93po »

9dev wrote: post #257
93po wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are tons of free mastadon servers that cost nothing to end users and perfectly capture the functionality of twitter/facebook/whatever. yes there is root cost at its core, but its distributed across people who volunteer to pay for it on smaller scales becasue they enjoy running those services. agreed its trickier when its gets to stuff like youtube, but piracy being free and widely spread is an example of how it…

As much as I despise ads, this is a pretty delusional take. Mastodon was only possible because of the hard work of open source contributors with day jobs that feed them . Running and accessing these instances requires all sorts of costly infrastructure that doesn’t materialise out of the blue. And finally, there may be a handful of geeks that enjoy paying for hosting, but that only works as long as it’s a niche commu…

i think you're missing the point. my point is that free software exists, and i recognize that the people who build it arent paying the bills with it. i'm saying there's no logistical reason why the vast majority of software people use cant be open source even with this being the case - it's capitalist pressures that suppress its visibility and therefore adoption.

my point with torrenting is that people offer their bandwidth for free without any real incentive to do so. if there was more systemic open source adoption and awareness of how systems like this work well when people make token donations (like with bandwidth) then i think we could be fine.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#338

Post by ckosidows »

Barbing wrote: post #102
sega_sai wrote: post #56

The 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.)

Shhh! Don't let Google know about this trick. I've gotten stuck in approximately 0 doom scroll loops since disabling view history and I'd like to keep it that way.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#339

Post by anton-c »

Barbing wrote: post #331
anton-c wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had my youtube watch history off for years. It still knows what I like. Hence why I open a new private browser for each session.

Have you seen EFF’s Cover Your Tracks or other browser fingerprinting test sites? I’m under the impression my use of private tabs & blockers & iCloud Private Relay is nearly useless when browsing sites of any sufficiently large company, and I won’t lie and say it’s not somewhat frustrating and disturbing.

It probably doesn't stop any tracking - that's true. It does reset my video feed though.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#340

Post by Barbing »

anton-c wrote: post #339
Barbing wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen EFF’s Cover Your Tracks or other browser fingerprinting test sites? I’m under the impression my use of private tabs & blockers & iCloud Private Relay is nearly useless when browsing sites of any sufficiently large company, and I won’t lie and say it’s not somewhat frustrating and disturbing.

It probably doesn't stop any tracking - that's true. It does reset my video feed though.

A success in that then! OK thanks for confirming I’m prob not _ludicrously_ paranoid :)
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