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Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by cwhiz on Friday November 13, 2020 @07:31AM (#25081477)
Thanks for giving us all the machine learning data. We no longer need your services.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by tiborsaas on Friday November 13, 2020 @07:57AM (#25081668)
But users also benefit from it. You can search for the contents of the images in your private gallery.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by f1refly on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:30AM (#25082492)
You mean like that one time when it tagged blacks as apes? I'm sure the users feel like they made a great deal.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by chronofar on Friday November 13, 2020 @10:00AM (#25082902)
Yes, let's cherry pick this one example to invalidate all ML strides in image recognition under the guise of racism, surely that seems reasonable.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by cwhiz on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:14AM (#25081791)
“private”
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by rockengineer84 on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:39AM (#25081976)
has Google ever made your data public?
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by manquer on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:20AM (#25082375)
Not private doesn't mean public.

Can google guarantee this data is not used to fuel their ad or other businesses in anyway ?

Can they guarantee US Law Enforcement Agencies(LEA) will not have access without due process and informing you ?

Can they guarantee LEAs from other countries will not given access to this data ?

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by bobsoap on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:21AM (#25082387)
Private = only you, and no one else, not even Google.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by cwhiz on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:43PM (#25086510)
Google has had data leaks and hacks, yes. It’s not private unless you own it and control it.

If you send it to Google it is unequivocally not private.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by minikites on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:18AM (#25081835)
We benefit daily from all sorts of horrors, that's not a justification to keep doing horrors.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by tiborsaas on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:29AM (#25081906)
That's bit of a hyperbole. How is ML horror?
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by minikites on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:35AM (#25081948)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveill...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/19/federal...

By providing ML training data, you're indirectly supporting the consolidation of power in the hands of the few who have the ability to surveil everyone and the physical might to enforce their will.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by Nasrudith on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:33AM (#25082526)
My urine like everyone else's contains potassium and can be used to create gunpowder - does this mean I am enabling terrorists to blow people up every time I take a leak?
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by minikites on Friday November 13, 2020 @10:34AM (#25083307)
If you and millions of other people captured, packaged, and transmitted that urine to a central urine clearinghouse (similar to how Google Photos works), then yes. Innocuous activities can easily be made dangerous when those activities are centralized and scaled up to a level involving/affecting hundreds of millions of people.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by Heliosmaster on Friday November 13, 2020 @07:35AM (#25081506)
it sucks but.. yeah, that's how it works.

And that is enabled by VC funded culture, where you have million of dollars invested in companies, which can then offer services at a loss investing in something else (market share, training data, etc.).

Using smaller companies which charge honestly for the services they provide is probably more sustainable in the long term.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by derwiki on Friday November 13, 2020 @07:57AM (#25081670)
In this case though, a smaller company might not be around forever. When you’re looking at storing important photos, the service you think will last longest may be best.

(I use Flickr, Gphotos and an S3 bucket but I’m paranoid)

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by mvexel on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:21AM (#25082395)
Flickr changed hands a couple times, almost went under and is still struggling to stay afloat. So you're right to be paranoid. I have been a paying Flickr Pro user since the beginning of time, but I don't feel that my photos are any 'safer' there than they would be on Google Photos.

Also, Flickr has done an arguably nastier bait and switch when they announced the end of their unlimited free storage. At least Google seems to be willing to keep the photos already uploaded around. For now.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by ghaff on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:37AM (#25081959)
I use Flickr as well but I also back up in other ways, including locally. As I wrote on another thread, I'd never depend on a photo sharing site as my primary storage.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by awinder on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:43AM (#25082015)
> Using smaller companies which charge honestly for the services they provide is probably more sustainable in the long term.

Smaller companies also commonly get acquired, shuttered, or become big companies in their own right. There's no panacea here. I think by the third or fourth time I was migrating from "the honesty priced option" the reality settled in that "honestly priced" is usually just an uninventive advertising moniker used for overpriced underdeveloped products.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by rockengineer84 on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:39AM (#25081973)
that kind of statement is harsh. what gives you a guarantee that any other paid service is not going to do this "machine learning" on your data. has Google ever made public your data?
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by diggan on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:45AM (#25082039)
I think the point is if you charge upfront for storing peoples data under a certain price plan, you're less likely to change anything regarding the deal because you're in the business of storing peoples data. If you do bad, people will stop using the service, and you lose your business. You're more aligned with your users.

Compare it to Google, where they can operate under a loss for a particular service (like Google Photos) in order to increase profits in a different market (like AI recognition tools). Once they are done with whatever they wanted to do, they can close down the service without much consequence, the business lives on.

Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by abdullahkhalids on Friday November 13, 2020 @07:35AM (#25081501)
I would contend that the people who do pay for Google Photos are now potential customers of lots of the other apps, and hence can be advertised to as such.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by OscarTheGrinch on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:32AM (#25081927)
The google AI will think cats rule the earth.
Re:Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. N... by Markoff on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:45AM (#25082690)
Well they still want extra 15GB.