this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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privacy

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Big tech and governments are monitoring and recording your eating activities. c/Privacy provides tips and tricks to protect your privacy against global surveillance.

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Google Starts Scanning Your Photos—3 Billion Users Must Now Decide (www.forbes.com)
submitted 3 days ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ca
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[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 51 points 3 days ago

At the time, Google assured me that SafetyCore was an enabling framework and would not actually start scanning photos or other content.

I audibly snorted at this.

Well that time has now come and it starts with Google Messages. As reported by 9to5Google, “Google Messages is rolling out Sensitive Content Warnings that blur nude images on Android.”

I know whenever my phone announces of its own accord that it’s figured out that an image on my phone is a nude, the first word that comes to mind is “safe.”

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 34 points 3 days ago

Google has been scanning your photos for a long time, both in the Gallery and the Photos app. Yes, with AI.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 22 points 3 days ago

Unhinged behaviour that we just supposed to accept becuase a mega corpo is doing it?

[–] xep@fedia.io 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Who asked for this?

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago

Authoritarian governments probs

[–] Skellysgirl@lemm.ee 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have started to leave google. Can I ask them to remove any scanned data?

[–] halendos@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago

You can ask, but I doubt they'll do it, even if they say they do.

[–] haroldfinch@feddit.nl 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

George Orwell was off by a few decades, it seems.

[–] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

While I understand your point, the biggest misconception about the 1984 book is that it's mainly about surveillance — it's about manipulation of words, e.g. Ministry of "Peace".

[–] haroldfinch@feddit.nl 2 points 1 day ago

While I understand your point, it was never implied in my comment that 1984 is mainly about surveillance — in fact, it implicitly drew a parallel to the fictional setting of 1984, e.g. "the dystopian future wherein total surveillance to control the narrative" appearing to have become reality.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

The words led to the acceptance of the surveillance.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

On one hand, this is a huge grey zone in terms of privacy. But on the other hand, it's also a huge win for anybody who has had to endure unsolicited dick pics. I used to work with a woman who had a stalker that would send her "tribute" photos from spoofed numbers to appear as people in her contact list; this feature wouldn't have completely blocked the messages, but would have at least mitigated some of the trauma she went through.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then it should be at the phone level. Setting of: blur photos from unknown contacts.

All this google function has done is get parents in trouble with the law and closed google accounts when telehealth doctors have asked for pictures of their kids rashes for diagnosis

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I know the story you're referring to, that's something different. That was a cloud-based storage scanning, this appears to be running entirely locally on the user's device.

Imo, it's a better solution, but still not perfect, and not immune to abuse.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

Yeah facebooks WhatsApp was doing local phone scanning of content and then reporting back to the mothership. Its under the guise of protecting kids from abuse, but it can also be nefarious if Facebook is pressured by the government to also include a scan of anti administration talk, or a person search. Just too Orwellian in my opinion

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -3 points 3 days ago

Clearly this is why Google is adding this feature