tell me how to opt-out
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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from what I understood, you have to opt in. so by default, Gemini will not have access to your gallery. It's just matter of time tho when will Google force this upon it's users imo
ok thanks
uninstall it or uninstall all app updates and nuke the app data, then switch to local storage and fossify gallery or something
or throw out your phone and buy a fairphone or a phone compatible with grapheneOS
the nuclear option ngl, but my plan: am just gonna wait for my Rooted A55(stuck at one ui 7 cause i dont want to get rid of bootloader unlocking,rooted my phone so am unable to update) until it breaks, i cannot wait for the grapheneOS powered Motorola.(i hope it sells in my country!)
These intrusive app rollouts are why they want to disable open source repositories. I have google photos disabled, and use gallery from fdroid. I have to manually leave the camera to look at photos but at least if I take a pic in private it probably stays private.
Why search for a doctor’s appointment when Google has access to all your calendar events. Why search for a party invite when it reads all your emails. And why search for a specific photo of you and your loved ones to create an image, when it sees all your photos.
They try very hard to sell this as something positive and not the privacy invasive nightmare it is.
I am 99% certain the author was writing with a purposefully sardonic tone.
I warned most of my family and friends this was going to happen when I de-Googled and set up Immich and they all said I was paranoid.
I wish I could do that... I even learned like 70% of the knowledge I would need to do something like that.... Now I just need the hardware market to crash, so I can actually fucking afford the hardware to do it.
What's your budget?
You can still geht really good deals on older used mini pcs
Alright, I already transfered the pics to my Immich a month ago anyway, time to delete my shit outright...
Yeah. Because Google would never keep the images anyway.
Yeah, but at least it'll all be outdated and nothing new is added. And hey, maybe in the future we could get laws that force them to delete anything older than a certain date. Would leaving them there be any better?
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Time to finally finish setting up my immich instance properly.
GrapheneOS works great for me. Not a lot you can do on stock android that you can’t do on GrapheneOS. I would highly recommend anyone looking for privacy to look into it. Very very easy to install. Just make sure you have a Pixel phone that is unlocked. I’ve been using it as my daily driver for two years now.
GrapheneOS isn't a replacement for Google Photos though? What do you use for photo backups? (Immich seems like the obvious answer, but I'd like to know if there's more options out there)
It let's you run Google Photos without network permissions and with storage scopes limiting it to certain folders.
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Pardon me, starts?
Exactly. It's google. They're scanning EVERYTHING. Even if you don't use google, they probably know about you from OTHERS' devices who are using google.
If you're able to manage a Docker container, you could consider Immich. It works great, has client apps for iOS and Android. Open Source. I've been using it for a few years now.
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Does it matter if you don't update? I imagine they already have it on their servers, which is where I imagine the photos are mostly processed.
Since decades, Google Photos is cloud storage. Update or no, they already got your photos for this.
The more offensive part is, Google Photos is not only the default image viewer on (Google's) Android, but (Google's) Camera app will only open pictures in it too. So it's cloud crap that's also literally programmed into a lot of people's cameras.
Check out https://github.com/CaramelFur/GPhotosShim which stops GCam from using Photos. This is why my gOS uses GCam with network denied (because it works way better on Pixels than the OSS equivalent).
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Time to invert the colors of some extra weird porn and stuff my Google drive to the brim.
Voiding my privacy, stealing my IP and opening me up to liabilities....and tis all legal... fuck all of you who gargled their balls and betrayed your own interests for what amounts to digital toys.
I appreciate the sentiment. One of the core conflicts I've had with family over the past couple decades has been their unrepentant usage of my data on these platforms. As a result, I never take or share pictures. They've responded over the years by casting suspicion on me, for not capitulating to the status quo, and for wanting to understand the nuts-and-bolts of technology. I've never shared mine nor others' data. I worked in the data economy for about a decade and still, they'd dismiss my well-founded concerns in favor of corporate propaganda and the ego-dopamine loop. "What do you have to hide?" Dumb fucks.
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Me reading this article top to bottom
Pandora's Tech Box opened long ago. It's already way too late.
That's a terrible article though and seems quite click-baity, it's hard to say what's going on just based on that.
It also says
We’re talking Personal Intelligence, Google’s latest AI upgrade path which lets users opt-in to connecting Google apps to Gemini.
If it's opt-in, it's fine, as long as the user knows what exactly they are opting in for.
The way they are doing it is kind of sketchy though. They are replacing the old search functionality with Gemini and now if you click the search icon in Google photos it immediately pops up asking you to pick your own face. There's no option to skip this step, though you can still revert to the old search for now.
The creepy part is that when they ask you to select your face, it's pretty clear they've already figured it out, because it's the first face they show you.
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