Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  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
鉅犫牭 avuko
@avuko@infosec.exchange  路  activity timestamp 13 hours ago
@lauren So much this.

Meanwhile for everyone with a phone set to English, WhatsApp is feeding every search to their META AI, and no way to disable. AND they have an annoying button which is a very brightly coloured dark pattern/ downright click jacking.

For every circlejerk corpo trying to force this stuff down our throats: WE DO NOT CONSENT.
Petra van Cronenburg
@NatureMC@mastodon.online  路  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? 馃

#Google #gemini #GoogleMail#DSA#GDPR#AItraining #privacy
Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  activity timestamp 23 hours ago

@bsm You are conflating different systems. Unless you've worked inside Google, as I have, you may not have as precise an understanding of these systems as I do. There is a BIG difference between the systems that have traditionally scanned Gmail for malware, spam, and (until it stopped serving context targeted ads), targeted ad placements -- vis-a-vis a general purpose LLM like Gemini operating across a range of products. At least according to my current information, Gemini has not been trained on Gmail except as disclosed to various classes of Gmail users (e.g. enterprise -- and that is indeed a controversial situation relating to defaults). But the push of this into the consumer Gmail side now is a major escalation because most users do not understand the implications.
Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  activity timestamp 12 hours ago
@faz @bsm I've never seen evidence (either externally or when I had the opportunity internally) that Google knowingly violates their ToS. There has always been a great deal of public hyperbole regarding Google that did not conform to reality -- especially regarding ads. However, what we're seeing now falls more into the category of "dark patterns" which do not necessarily violate the ToS but are unethical nonetheless.
Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  activity timestamp 24 hours ago

I believe I've found the new Gemini-centric "smart features" controls in Gmail, that also seem to include the "other apps" setting as well. If you click the gear, then All Settings, then scroll WAY DOWN in the General tab, there's a "Manage Workspace smart feature settings" bubble. If you click that, you'll see a pair of settings that appear to represent your choices during the forced dialogue modal popup I discussed in the original post on this thread. I can't be 100% sure, but that's how it appears to me currently. My recommendation: Make sure they are both OFF!
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
@jwcph@helvede.net  路  activity timestamp 17 hours ago
@lauren Why would you ever trust them to honor any of your settings though? As you said they already overrode them to get to this & also their #AI is stealing content everywhere else.

The only option is to get the everloving fuck out of the #Google ecosystem & then just hope they can't get to you in other ways, which they probably can but don't obey in advance. #Resistance is its own reward & also might actually work eventually. Not resisting definitely won't.
Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  activity timestamp 15 hours ago
@jwcph My concern is with ordinary users who as a practical matter have to use these systems and do not have the technical background for workaround hacks. My goal is finding ways to convince -- or force through legislation -- firms like Google to do the right thing for their billions of users. Because the reality is most users ARE going to keep using these systems, because the time and confusion associated with switching is entirely out of scope for most. Most people can just barely use these systems and devices well enough to get crucial things done, making things harder for them by disrupting what they've finally learned is not a viable solution for the vast majority.
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
@jwcph@helvede.net  路  activity timestamp 14 hours ago
@lauren Well, that's true, but also not. Switching email, for example, is about as easy as getting a Gmail account in the first place - several services have "import from Gmail" as a default offering.

It just *feels* like it's a huge deal - like you're going to mess something up. You almost certainly won't but *you don't have to delete your Gmail to switch*! Leave it on for a bit while using your new email, until the dread feeling goes away.

People need to be told this, again & again.
Lauren Weinstein
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org  路  activity timestamp 14 hours ago
@jwcph My overall view is that all of the major email platforms are moving in the same direction, and that hopping from one to another is ultimately futile. These issues need to be dealt with en masse across the provider space, and that means legislatively. Obviously the environment for that right now is awful, but it remains the only long term solution. Because unless these practices are banned, all of these firms will ultimately feel the competitive pressure to use them. I concentrate on Google because it is obviously very large, has about a third of global email, and I know it the best (both as a user and internally from the times I worked inside).
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dave
@hologram@cyberplace.social  路  activity timestamp yesterday
@lauren if you're going to DeGoogle your phone according to the instruction here or on reddit - the 2 important assumptions are (1) you are on linux (2) you have the correct platform tools to match your android release - as in "google-android-sources-33-installer..." and "google-android-sources-33-installer" google-android-sources-33-installer are among the newest ones in Debian - that's for the method described here, and also on reddit -
https://indyradio.net/?q=node/277
My camera shoots fascists
@Mikal@sfba.social  路  activity timestamp yesterday
@lauren
One more reason to accelerate the de-Google-ification of my life.

But, FFS, every time you reply to someone with a Gmail address who hasn't turned this shit off, you're basically letting this creepy company ingest your email. And so damn many people use Gmail that it's pretty hard to say, "sorry, I can't respond to you until you switch to something else."

I fucking hate this.