I have Android 16 on a Pixel 8 but no Gemini. Is it not installed if I chose “No thanks” when I got the info screens about it?
Open settings, and search for"Gemini" from the search bar. That’s the only way I was able to get to anything Gemini related. I turned off it’s access to everything from there, then the last setting was to switch back to assistant which appears to have turned Gemini off, but who knows (hence disabling it’s access to everything anyway).
Privacy-conscious Indians are gonna have a nightmare. Indians excessively use whatsapp.
Everyone outside of the US uses whatsapp.
Viber is more popular in eastern europe
Sure , in 2010.
I haven’t turned it on. Am I safe?
Nop. Disable it in the settings/apps
I remember getting flamed so hard for saying that Google/android was incredibly invasive tech. I was laughed at, called an apple fanboy and accused of schilling.
Sadly, it looks like I’m the one laughing now.
Lol and Apple doesnt do any of that?
Show me evidence they do.
I can’t. Everything they release is proprietary and locked down, so let’s just trust their narrative.
I can only recommend well researched eyeopener from Techaltar: https://youtu.be/JHnBOUNxHsw
So, they’re doing shit you can prove, but they’re doing it. Do I have that right?
I will be honest that I don’t know what exact shit are we discussing here I rather wanted to point out that Apple might not be as much privacy first company as they like to present themselves.
No proof.
But even the US is scared of encrypted exfiltrated data because their adversaries could crack the encryption later on.Same here.
They have the data and for now decided to not yet do do anything too bad with it.
But Google also had the motto “Don’t be evil” at one point.So…. No proof.
Apple absolutely does collect huge amounts of data from the users. The difference is they don’t directly ‘sell’ that data to advertisers. Instead they get paid to personalize the ads themselves and wear that as a badge for ‘advocating privacy’. Stock Android is horrendous compared to what Apple does, yes. However you usually have the option to ditch it for a more privacy respecting Android.
Same for you. Proof that Apple isn’t using it to analyze your (usage) data.
And it’s not okay just because it’s the 1st party analyzing it because they arent selling it.I am really tired of the hypocrisy of some lemmy users advocating for maximum privacy to the detriment of everyone around them but on the other hand just saying “yeah, that’s totally fine” and basically breaking all their principles.
Look up a YT channel called Tech-Bore
That ain’t proof.
Yes it is, because he shows you
They haven’t done anything with that data yet*
While clearly the lesser evil in this moment, I wouldn’t count on that lasting forever.
As every user at some points mentions: They are a public company and once they can’t satisfy their shareholders, they will turn on the data faucet to 3rd parties. They already have the an advertisement CDN.
They already have everything in place to achieve that situation.
Signal is also a great alternative to WhatsApp. Molly for the extra privacy focused.
Don’t go and manually install it.
The misinformation about this has been wild.
What I hate most about this is the lack of control over this it implies. Sure, maybe you don’t install this on your device, but all that’s needed for Google to access your messages now is for someone you message to have it installed and enabled, then anything you send to them will be gobbled up by Google.
My gf got one of those emails, but she doesnt have the Gemini app installed on her phone. All of the instruction articles I can find only explain how to turn it off if you have the app.
Does not having the app mean that she’s safe from this, or does it mean that she needs to download the app to disable the “feature”?
I also don’t have a Gemini app but if you search for Gemini in the Settings main menu, it shows up.
I don’t have the app, and searching for “gemini” only gives “gemini settings” which when clicked opens the promt of “do you accept changing Google assistant to gemini”, clicking “not now” just sends me back to setting search.
Thank you. We had actually already checked this but had not found Gemini in the settings.
Turns out typing “gem” in the settings search is not enough. Only typing “Gemini” returned a result.
Sneaky, aren’t they?
Kinda seems fucking stupid
If I have the app disabled it probably can’t do anything right?
Which app ?
The Gemini app. I can’t uninstall it from my phone but I have it disabled. Not sure if Google’s other account access and apps on my phone are going to still feed into Gemini.
If your phone is unaltered in any way, absolutely nothing you do on it is private, even turned off.
Sweating over one app when your entire phone is the posterboy for spyware? lol
Why are you being downvoted for this? In stock devices the user has no way to even start looking at what is being run. All you can do is trust the manufacturer.
Because it’s worth plugging up some privacy holes even if you can’t get all of them. Google already knows my name, address, and phone number, but that’s no reason to let 5th Edition Character Sheet learn it too. They already have gigabytes of personally identifiable data on me, doesn’t mean I’m cool with them bumping that up to terabytes
I think when google app and play services still present on your device, it feeds data into gemini anyway. Hope you are not using google vanilla apps.
By the way why you arent able to uninstall gemini app ? 🤔 Did you tried lineage os with microg which is way better ?!
I have stock android on a pixel and was able to just uninstall it. So it’s not all devices at least
I can’t find Gemini on my phone.
It’s absolutely there,it relaced assistant…
Not that I support this, but hasn’t Google Assistant been able to do that for years? Sending texts via the voice assistant has been, like, one of the main selling points.
Hopefully unintalling and disabling is actually doing something. I feel like they are just tricking us and you can’t really disable it.
Oh hell nah
Is this a US only thing? I have no email and no Gemini app (although there are settings in system)
I hope so considering I talk to others who will have Android phones with Google on it.
