Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

WARNING: #GOOGLE IS TRYING TO TRICK YOU INTO USING GEMINI AI AND FEEDING GEMINI YOUR DATA IN GMAIL AND OTHER APPS!

What Google is now doing should be ILLEGAL. PERIOD. For the first time I can recall in history of using Gmail, it just now popped a modal dialogue box -- DEMANDING that I choose whether or not I wanted "Smart Features" turned on -- which when you read the verbiage mostly means goddamned Gemini AI AND if you enable this you're giving Google permission to use your data to "improve" this horrifically invasive, inept, and misinformation spewing tech that steals data from websites for its own use without permission of those sites. DON'T LET IT SUCK IN YOUR EMAIL AS WELL!

There was no way I could find to exit the modal window without choosing YES or NO, which means my existing selection to NOT use Gmail Smart Features (long my preference) was NOT being honored. After saying NO to this disgusting query by Google, I was pushed to ANOTHER page where I was forced to choose again about "smart features" in "other" Google apps. I chose NO again and finally was permitted to escape this trap.

Note that while you can fairly easily check to make sure "smart features" are turned off in Gmail settings, I offhand don't have a clue as to how to find the similar settings in other Google apps that may have been affected by this absolutely disrespectful forced dialogue, as Google keeps trying to ram Gemini AI down our throats.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Google has become a DISGRACE.

#Google#Gmail#Gemini#AI
Petra van Cronenburg
@NatureMC@mastodon.online  ·  activity timestamp 17 hours ago
@lauren I'm not that familiar with legal stuff but ask myself if we could get Google fined for infringement of the DSA act or GDPR laws in the EU? https://www.disinfo.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/20221020_DSAUserGuide_Final.pdf By complaints we should get the @EUCommission to an investigation: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-enforcement

Or am I too optimistic? 🤔

#Google #gemini #GoogleMail#DSA#GDPR#AItraining #privacy
Em :official_verified:
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 6 days ago

New[ish] Privacy Guides article 🪪🚫
by me:

Age verification laws have been multiplying in recent years. This is extremely bad news for your privacy rights.

While framed as a measure to
protect the children, collecting more data on every users of the internet endangers everyone, including the children.

This isn't a protective measure,
this is authoritarian policies normalizing mass surveillance and silencing dissidents.

It could very much become
the end of pseudonymity online,
if we do not push back against it.

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/05/06/age-verification-wants-your-face/

#PrivacyGuides#Privacy#AgeVerification#GDPR#Biometrics#MassSurveillance
Tommaso Gagliardoni
@tomgag@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp 6 days ago

ETHZ and EPFL announced the release of a Large Language Model (LLM) developed on public infrastructure: Trained on the “Alps” supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in 8B and 70B parameters configurations, using open-source training data, respecting web crawling opt-outs during data acquisition, and natively fluent in over 1000 languages. Quoting: "The model will be fully open: source code and weights will be publicly available, and the training data will be transparent and reproducible".

I don't know how good it's going to be, but if true for me this is the real definition of "open-source" in AI (not the ridiculous, corporate-promiscuous definition by the Open Source Initiative).

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/07/a-language-model-built-for-the-public-good.html

#AI#LLM#ETH#EPFL #switzerland #eu #sovereignty #digitalsovereignty #opensource #osi #openwashing #privacy #gdpr
Raphael Albert
@r_alb@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

If you know anyone in the European Union who is seriously considering buying Meta's spyglasses, please remind them that using those privacy nightmares would make them a controller according to the GDPR. They'd be responsible for ensuring full compliance with our privacy laws, which - surprise, surprise - will be impossible.

Please tell them to save themselves and everyone around them the trouble and give the money to any NGO instead.
--
#privacy#DataProtection#GDPR#Meta#BanRayBan
Jan Penfrat
@ilumium@eupolicy.social  ·  activity timestamp last week

Potentially groundbreaking court ruling against #Meta:

"A German court has ruled that Meta must pay €5,000 to a 🇩🇪 #Facebook user who sued the platform for embedding #tracking in third-party websites."

"This may very well be one of the most substantial rulings coming out of Europe this year, ... €5,000 in damages for one visitor adds up quickly if you have tens of thousands of visitors, or even millions."

https://therecord.media/german-court-meta-tracking-tech

#privacy #digitalrights #gdpr #TrackingFreeAds
Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week
@silentexception
> in the name of decentralization, a small group of people, that have not been elected, decided that nothing could be deleted online (because they let GAFAMs scrap their data while being against it????)

What are you talking about? This smoothie of confused claims has nothing to do with anything in that screenshot.
Nicolas MOUART
@silentexception@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp last week
@strypey Dennis Schubert and the like, decided that "public is public", allow search engines to crawl public posts -by design-, and thus all these posts go to Google search and other search enginers, in a distributed environment, where nothing can be deleted or with extreme difficulty, including diffamatory comments. Where posts trending on #Diaspora; based on hashtags come on up on top in google search results, this is harassement, this bullying, this unacceptable, this is not democratic. #GDPR
Nicolas MOUART
@silentexception@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

There is no mention of me being a geany pig or a lab rat on my French passport... #France#EU

So basically, in the name of decentralization, a small group of people, that have not been elected, decided that nothing could be deleted online (because they let GAFAMs scrap their data while being against it????). That's called democracy? I don't think so. #Diaspora #fediverse#GDPR#rightToBeForgotten #threads#Meta#FB#X ...

And Dennis Schubert is interviewed by Ars Technica, is this a joke?
Nicolas MOUART
@silentexception@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

Q: Based on his ideas, would Adolf Hitler be for or against GDPR and right to erasure nowadays if he still lived?

A: It's reasonable to infer that Hitler would not support a regulation like #GDPR which emphasizes individual rights such as #privacy protection, data accessibility or erasure; and instead might favor more centralized control over information dissemination for propaganda purposes.

#webscraping #technology#EU #history #historyrepeating #transparency #regulation #humanrights

Based on his ideas, would Adolf Hitler be for or against GDPR and right to erasure nowadays if he still lived? As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions or beliefs. However, I can provide analysis based on historical context and known ideologies: Adolf Hitler held extremely different views from those encapsulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a regulation enacted by the European Union to protect individuals' personal data privacy. It emphasizes transparency, security of processing and grants rights such as access, rectification, erasure ("right to be forgotten"), restriction of processing, data portability, objection, and non-discrimination in relation to automated decision making including profiling. Hitler's ideology was rooted deeply in racial superiority (Nazism), anti-Semitic beliefs, nationalistic fervor, militarization, totalitarian control over society, propaganda manipulation and suppression of dissent—all fundamentally opposed to the principles underlying GDPR. Given this stark contrast: It's reasonable to infer that Hitler would not support a regulation like GDPR which emphasizes individual rights such as privacy protection, data accessibility or erasure; and instead might favor more centralized control over information dissemination for propaganda purposes.
Based on his ideas, would Adolf Hitler be for or against GDPR and right to erasure nowadays if he still lived? As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions or beliefs. However, I can provide analysis based on historical context and known ideologies: Adolf Hitler held extremely different views from those encapsulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a regulation enacted by the European Union to protect individuals' personal data privacy. It emphasizes transparency, security of processing and grants rights such as access, rectification, erasure ("right to be forgotten"), restriction of processing, data portability, objection, and non-discrimination in relation to automated decision making including profiling. Hitler's ideology was rooted deeply in racial superiority (Nazism), anti-Semitic beliefs, nationalistic fervor, militarization, totalitarian control over society, propaganda manipulation and suppression of dissent—all fundamentally opposed to the principles underlying GDPR. Given this stark contrast: It's reasonable to infer that Hitler would not support a regulation like GDPR which emphasizes individual rights such as privacy protection, data accessibility or erasure; and instead might favor more centralized control over information dissemination for propaganda purposes.
Based on his ideas, would Adolf Hitler be for or against GDPR and right to erasure nowadays if he still lived? As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions or beliefs. However, I can provide analysis based on historical context and known ideologies: Adolf Hitler held extremely different views from those encapsulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a regulation enacted by the European Union to protect individuals' personal data privacy. It emphasizes transparency, security of processing and grants rights such as access, rectification, erasure ("right to be forgotten"), restriction of processing, data portability, objection, and non-discrimination in relation to automated decision making including profiling. Hitler's ideology was rooted deeply in racial superiority (Nazism), anti-Semitic beliefs, nationalistic fervor, militarization, totalitarian control over society, propaganda manipulation and suppression of dissent—all fundamentally opposed to the principles underlying GDPR. Given this stark contrast: It's reasonable to infer that Hitler would not support a regulation like GDPR which emphasizes individual rights such as privacy protection, data accessibility or erasure; and instead might favor more centralized control over information dissemination for propaganda purposes.