• muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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    9 天前

    Google has decided you cannot turn off Gemini in their newer versions of Android. You cannot install other roms that do either, Google is killing those too. But yea, Apple is the bad guy. Ignore the Google rug pull.

    • Khrux@ttrpg.network
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      9 天前

      As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.

      • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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        9 天前

        Apple never opened that door. Google did, but they never intended to keep it open. it was there to catch up with apple. they never intended to do any good here. it was there to speed up development and win people over, then after they are already there, google can close the door and screw them all. That’s what’s happening now. It was a bait and switch.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        8 天前

        Like most things in contemporary society, we are given the choice between two terrible options, and then encouraged to go all in on one of those terrible choices, or you’re a LOSER.

        Modern life is just Pavlov’s lab.

      • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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        9 天前

        You actually turned off geminis ability to serve YOU. You never turned off Gemini itself. Google won’t allow that. It’s still running in the background send your data to Google and its advertising partners. Google has publicly stated this is the intended design and they will not allow turning that off.

            • titanicx@lemmy.zip
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              9 天前

              No. They provided me a nice little button that allows me to disable Gemini, and they have allowed me to opt out of any usage. So again. Show me that it is still active after I have disabled it.

              • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                8 天前

                I was curious so I searched. This is the best info I could find.

                https://proton.me/blog/turn-off-gemini-on-android

                Proton claims that even if you turn everything off, it will still watch in the background because Google is replacing assistant with Gemini. That still hasn’t happened on my phone. I can still use the regular Google assistant, but I feel like I’m not smart enough to evaluate the claims to know whether it is really running on my phone or not.

                Proton also has a profit motive in making people upset with Google, so I don’t know.

                • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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                  8 天前

                  It’s true profit can benefit from people being mad at Google but abandoning Google services doesn’t automatically make you a proton user either.

              • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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                8 天前

                Let’s say I install a button on your car that flips from “broken” to “fixed” my itself. Anytime you complain something is wrong, I flip that switch to “fixed.” That doesn’t change anything. The switch just tells other things to do something. It doesn’t enforce anything. It’s basically telling Google whether you want it or not, not actually obeying you.

                  • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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                    7 天前

                    Cute. You assert you are right by ignoring my point completely. I gave an example where a switch that does nothing could be used to convince you it did something. You basically said “nuh-uh”.

                  • asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev
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                    7 天前

                    I’ll believe the programming.

                    What programming? Code related to turning off Gemini is not publicly available. You’re blindly trusting Google engineers.

              • asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev
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                5 天前

                No. They provided me a nice little button that allows me to disable Gemini, and they have allowed me to opt out of any usage. So again. Show me that it is still active after I have disabled it.

      • bss03@infosec.pub
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        9 天前

        I’ve lost features that used to work without Gemini, but I believe it is disabled on both my Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 8 I have access to.

        • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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          9 天前

          Nope, it’s still running in the background. You just turned off its ability to interact with you but can and does still interact with others.

              • bss03@infosec.pub
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                8 天前

                The first one does tell you how to “completely remove Gemini from your smartphone” under that heading. I do not have the Gemini app installed.

                The second one says:

                Can you fully disable Gemini on Android?

                No, and that’s by design. While you can turn off activity tracking, revoke permissions, and even uninstall the Gemini app on some devices, Google is actively replacing its Assistant app with Gemini.

                But, I’ve also disabled Google Assistant across all applications, so I don’t share data with Gemini/Assistant. I had to lose some features to do so.

                Overall, your reply serves to confirm for me that I have disabled Gemini on both of my Android devices. Still, I appreciate the links!

              • bss03@infosec.pub
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                8 天前

                Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. There IS a lot of telemetry and other BS that is definitely still on my phone, included in OS updates, and not uninstallable (I can “uninstall updates”, but that would also give me back any security issues). But, I don’t think that it is Gemini, or at least predates that naming convention.

                To get free of Google telemetry, I’d have to install a non-Google ROM, and I haven’t ever tried that.

                Telemetry certainly can be abused, and Google should be legally (by regulation) required to provide a simple opt-out. BUT, telemetry really is a fairly normal thing to include in “web-scale” deployments and is primarily used to discover issues that have escaped into production without affecting a testing environment–or, at least, that what the telemetry systems I’ve interacted with as an software developer were for. So, I’m not too worried about non-personalized data collection.

                EDIT: I confirmed that Google says I have no Gemini activity to delete, so while I’m sure my phone is reporting stuff, it’s not to Gemini.