this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Why is Google problematic? I store my media locally, and back up locally, but it's on Google Drive for offsite backup.
Lack of privacy is a huge reason. If you're OK with Google scanning all of your photos to sell you adds and build their AI then it's a fine option.
They definitely scan your photos, but definitely not to personalize ads.
Also, you can easily turn off ad personalization in your Google account.
As for building their AI system, this is also true but it's opt-in. It allows your photos to be shown to people using Crowdsource to help improve Google AI.
Here's a relevant quote from their privacy policy:
We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we use service providers to help operate our data centers, deliver our products and services, improve our internal business processes, and offer additional support to customers and users.
If you're OK with Google using your personal information to sell you adds or with then selling your personal information directly, then it's a fine option.
Again, i's a privacy issue. Some people are OK with giving up privacy for convenience, and that's fine.
That does not say that "personal information" refers to things you store privately on Google services. You can still turn off ad personalization anyway.
Here is a quote from Google Safety Center's ads and data section:
We never use the content you create and store in apps like Drive, Gmail, and Photos for ads purposes.
If you trust them, which it seems like you do, to not sell your information for advertising purposes then maybe thats true.
They're still sharing your personal information with others. Maybe you trust Google to not use the information stored in your drive for ads or to sell you shit but do you then also implicitly trust every corporation that that give that data to? To you then also trust those companies to always handle and treat your personal information with the respect it deserves for all time?
I kinda trust them, I don't have any important files on Drive, but I have all my photos on Google Photos, which especially with these Drive files lost news, is not a good idea. I think I will transition to Immich which I already have set up, so I, and only I have control over my data, and it's also free for 5x as more storage (because of an 1TB external hard drive)