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Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
31–40 of 330 posts
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
This a very weird set of choices by Google. How many users are uploading photos from their camera to their phone so they can then upload them from the phone to the web? I bet almost 100% of photo uploads using the default Android photo picker, or the default Android web browser, are of photos that were taken with the default Android camera app. If Google feels that the location tags and filenames are unacceptably inv…
My phone: my private space. Anything in the browser: not my private space. I want exactly that: the OS to translate between that boundary with a sane default. It’s unavoidable to have cases where this is inconvenient or irritating. I don’t even know on iPhone how files are named “internally” (nor do I care), since I do not access the native file system or even file format but in 99% of all use cases come in contact o…
It is not just a default when it is the only option.
The word default is more appropriately used when the decision can be changed to something the user finds more suitable for their usecase
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#33It's a sad story and a fun-looking project but I think Google 100% did the right thing here. Most people have no idea how much information is included in photo metadata, and stripping it as much as possible lines up to how people expect the world to work.
But surely there's a way to do this without totally killing valuable functionality? It's like the Android Sideloading debate all over again.
Something that is very useful to 1% of users is stripped away. And we end up with dumb appliances (and ironically - most likely still no privacy )
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#34Most likely: actually using the geolocation is an extremely niche usecase for images uploaded from mobile browsers. I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo. But yes, a prop to the input tag ’includeLocation’ which would then give the user some popup confirmation prompt would have been nice
> I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo. I'd wager 90% of the photos on Google Maps associated with various listings don't actually know their photos are in public. I keep coming across selfies and other photos that look very personal, but somehow someone uploaded to Google Maps, the photo is next to a store or somet…
I have friends that do that and it’s intentional. Had a good time at a store or restaurant? Take a selfie and upload to Google Maps. Also take a selfie video and upload to Instagram stories. It’s a way of life that defaults to more sharing.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically all up to the training data, as things often are.
I wonder if that might be another reason to just completely disable this feature and not make it a permission: otherwise people could use it to build trainingsets for geoguesser models.
People already uploaded tons of images and data while playing Pokemon GO. Probably model is already has been built and being tested right now
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#36How good are LLMs at geoguessing?
Pretty good. I test it every now and then from random photos. Sometimes spot on, sometimes gets very close, unless it's really ambiguous.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#37GrapheneOS already does this, since forever. Android can't stop copying GOS. Maybe they'll add a network toggle after a few years and call it a privacy win.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo. I'd wager 90% of the photos on Google Maps associated with various listings don't actually know their photos are in public. I keep coming across selfies and other photos that look very personal, but somehow someone uploaded to Google Maps, the photo is next to a store or somet…
Google prompts you in Google Maps if you want to upload your picture to Maps. I sometimes do that for random pictures, even like selfies, which I don't mind popping up there.
Wait... You post selfies on Google Maps? The thought never crossed my mind. What would the purpose be? Sorry I'm probably thick...
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#39I don't know a good solution for this. 99% of websites asking for this hypothetical permission would not deserve it. Users (rightfully) don't expect that uploading a photo leaks their location.
Element (the matrix client) used to not strip geolocation metadata for the longest time. I don't know if they fixed that yet.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#40It's a sad story and a fun-looking project but I think Google 100% did the right thing here. Most people have no idea how much information is included in photo metadata, and stripping it as much as possible lines up to how people expect the world to work.
If google really cared about privacy, they wouldn't have moved maps away from a subdomain. now if I want maps to have my location (logical), I need to grant google _search_ my location too.
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