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Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
The irony of complaining about unreasonable requirements from an Apple user isn't lost on me.
I don't know if the format really applies. Complaining about one corporation stealing your data while using another's product that does the same seems a bit pointless, especially when there are cheaper, better alternatives. The putting a stick through your own bike tire format seems more appropriate.
Anyone that claims Apple is stealing their data is drastically misinformed to the point where it feels like a rationalization.
Google does it, Facebook does it, Apple does not. Ask any engineer who works at these companies and they can confirm it.
It is frustrating to Apple engineers with how heavily restricted user data is. There are literally committees at Apple who default to No for any request. They do not profit off your data, they profit off the mark up on hardware and services.
Thinking it's a both/all sides thing is how much be enabled bad actors. The GOP is an example and anyone who falls for the corporate version is no smarter than anyone who falls for the political version. Luckily, it's not a lonely place to be.
Common sense is no longer common. Feelings have trumped all logic on the majority of Americans as well as the world population at large.
Apple absolutely does collect personal data from its users and uses that data to target advertising. They openly disclose this in their policy statements.
Stating that
They do not profit off your data
is unjustifiable when Apple makes BILLIONS from advertising.
They also have been fined by European regulators when their practices ran afoul of privacy law.
Just because they're not as bad as Google (quite a low bar) it doesn't mean they're as good as they try to sell you on.
Ask any engineer who works at these companies and they can confirm it.
Yeah ask the engineers who work for a company who's whole schtick is to pretend to be privacy friendly that it does not steal user data. They'll definitely tell us.
There are literally committees at Apple who default to No for any request.
Yeah well, Facebook had an ethics committee too, so they've always been ethical then huh?
But but but Apple is different…
Anyone who claims these companies have users best interest at heart are gullible people at best or a cult.
you need more of that "common sense" than using your feelings to dictate what multi billion companies are doing with your data.
That is absolute bullshit. I worked for Apple, training Siri. Through false positive we heard unsuspecting people having sex and dealing drugs while their real names and addresses were on the screen.
https://gizmodo.com/apple-agrees-to-95-million-settlement-in-siri-eavesdropping-lawsuit-2000544806
You're wrong about that, you're wrong about politics, and you made voting for a genocider your entire personnality. It's pretty sad really
If missing the point was an Olympic sport you'd be a gold medalist.
What’s the point? criticising me for complaining about an issue that is on my grandma’s phone that I encountered?
Like yes we get apple is shit, so is android. My grandma is 90 and not loaded with cash I can’t just put her on graphene os.
This is a real way she’s having her data mined. Because other parts of the family insist on using google photos for the “family album”.
The what did you expect with apple as if everyone is a tech savy person with enough free time to maintain a custom rom and money to just straight up buy a new phone when they learn there’s isn’t perfect just ends up dismissing valid criticism.
Couple things here
You made a criticism, other people are allowed to criticize what you said.
Using the excuse of "not loaded with cash" is one I'm confused about. New or used, Pixels (Or some Motos if the Pixel is not available in your country) are cheaper than iPhones.
You seem tech savy enough to use Fedi/Lemmy, why not help them transition to a better solution for their privacy by either buying an ente subscription where they manage hosting and you dont have to worry about that, or using (free) Immich which you have to host yourself but is well worth setting up. You can even import all of your google photos albums and photos 1:1 into Immich as they are on GPhotos.
It is valid to criticize apple. They are a company who likes to taught "privacy" when they are not any better than any other phone manufacturer, no one has denied this. You just seem to find it impossible to be able to criticize both Apple, and consumers who seem to know better (You seem to be aware of Custom ROMs, as you brought it up first).
No one is trying to attack you or your family here. The OP commentor made a joke out of an observation. A valid obervation, as why would you expect Apple or Google to take your privacy in consideration. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it should change, but that change is not going to come from continuing to get fucked by them. You dont need a custom ROM to use Immich or ente. You dont have to allow companies to fuck you. The longer you let them, the harder it is to get out.
Also personal tangent, theres no "maintaining a custom ROM" unless youre building your own ROM. Most recommended custom ROMs auto-update, and dont need any more "maintainence" than an iPhone or stock android.
Why even install this crap?!
People don't know. Researching good image backup/sharing options is beyond most normies. Privacy invasion isn't even a known problem for them to care about.
My parents certainly won't be able to comprehend this. My brothers are tech savvy, and it's taken years for them to come onboard with self hosting since I've started advocating it (one still can't because his wife finds it difficult to move away from Google photos).
If you’re on iOS you have to actively install this. So either they or someone else chose this. Plenty of options to move away from Gagle. It’s 2025.
Yeah, iOS is nuts.
Transfer files over bluetooth? Best go buy an entire apple product because fuck internationally recognized standards.
Transfer music to the iPhone? Gotta download one of two programs, make an apple account, and sync your entire library. Apple doesn't support common formats such as FLAC? Go fuck yourself and convert your entire library for them.
Backup your phone to the cloud? Apple doesn't let you select how many backups are saved so you run out of storage and get an upgrade to apple storage program for only $5.99 every other month/phone update.
I thought google was bad with their tyranny of default but the iphone 16 pro max is the pinnacle of anti user and pro consumerism. I list that phone as it is the only apple phone I have used.
I don't think this is an iOS problem, unless the Bluesky post predates the feature that showed me this when I tried to insert a picture in OneNote:
Choosing "Limit Access..." lead to this:
So yes. Both apple and Google are doing this shit. It's very bad at this point.
I'm genuinely considering getting Huawei with harmonyos as my next phone
Consider Huawei has a lot of adware, like Xiaomi.
And you think it will be different? They are all doing this, because your data and info is valuable to them. Who they share the info with might differ, but they are all designed to scrape the data of your life so they can get all the seedy details and use them for whatever the hell they use it for?! Lord only knows why they want to know what I jerk off to, but that's their problem.
Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can't share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can't video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.
Other apps happily let you do all of those things. You can just Share an image from some other app. But nope, WhatsApp just refuses.
I have WhatsApp on Android and have restricted its access to my photos. Every time I want to share an image I need to first select which new photos I want to give Whatsapp access to, then select the photos again to send them. Next time I tap to share an image I won't see any new photos in the options no matter how many new photos are in my gallery.
I can also share to Whatsapp from my gallery, which will prompt again the permission for this individual photo thing. Same.
WhatsApp is awful with permissions. I couldn't find a way to use it without giving it access to all my contacts. I installed it on the work profile and uninstalled it as soon as I didn't need it anymore.
Stop using Google trash. Google is evil.
Written black on white in 1998 so nearly 3 decades ago by Hal Ronald Varian, chief economist at Google, chapter 5 Recognizing Lock-In and chapter 6 Managing Lock-In with my own notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/ReadingNotes/InformationRules
Namely it's a strategy. It does not make it "OK" morally or ethically but at least business wise, we had been warned a long long time ago. If despite this been laid out so plainly and methodically we don't both individually and collectively, keep on using such services then we have to at least understand the consequences.
Edit: want to do something about it? Please do. Use https://takeout.google.com/ to leave then bring your own data in a system you actually manage, e.g. https://immich.app/ or whatever else better fit your need. If you still stay, you are giving Google more power to keep on using your data.
Maybe don’t use services by the worlds largest ad company?
Out of curiosity - are there any companies offering to host Immich for you and provide backups and stuff?
I’m tempted to self host it for my family, but my biggest concern is losing data that I self host (and time spent managing this).
In your situation, Ente would be better. Handling a VPS for Immich is asking for a headache.
Ente supports a family plan, handles hosting and backup for you, supports all your usual media files and imports them cleanly from Google Photos. But it's private, encrypted, and you can take out your data at any time with a single click.
If you use apple images or whatever the fuck it's called then they have the same thing. Unless you do their e2ee thing and hope they don't hold the decryption keys for that.
So happy I went the NAS route for photos solution... sure it costs more and takes some knowledge of how to do it, but it's not its only purpose either.
I'm on Android and turned off all Gemini features on my Google accounts. Now it refuses to let me do reverse image searches, claiming I "don't own" the images I'm trying to reverse search. It looks like (I haven't checked) they want me to upload the images to Drive and give Google permission to access everything again before they'll agree to do a reverse image search for me.
Fortunately, there's still TinEye and Yandex.
that the app has limited functionality without those permissions is scummy, but you should be able to access those photos from another app, Google Photos isn't locking them out of access, right? what's hostage about this?
Another hostage situation here is when migrating from android to apple, you can’t view your old Google photos without giving it access to your Apple photos. I’ve explicitly partitioned those photos and Google doesn’t need access to my new photos to allow me to view my old photos.
Does iOS have per file permissions? I don't think you can blame Google for something the OS can't do.
Yes iOS allows you to tell an app it can only access select photos but idk how google photos works since the built in one is good enough for me. Wouldn’t put it past google to say "all or nothing" tho.
if you’re not paying for a product, then YOU are the product being monetized.
Thank you for the wise words, you convinced me to ditch my free Linux installation in favor of a paid Windows license. Does anyone know a good paid alternative to the spyware VLC?
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