1/15/2025 at 8:46:41 AM
> You are Apple. You want to make search work like magic in the Photos app, so the user can find all their “dog” pictures with ease.What if you're a user and you don't care about searching for "dog" in your own photos, you might not even use the Photos app, but apple still scans all your photos and sends data off device without asking you?
Perhaps this complicated dance works, perhaps they have made no mistakes, perhaps no one hacks or coerces the relay host providers... they could still have just asked for consent the first time you open Photos (if you ever do) before starting the scan.
by chikere232
1/15/2025 at 12:07:24 PM
Exactly, I don't want my shit sent all across the internet without my explicit prior consent, period. No amount of explanation can erase Apple's fuck-up.by zombot
1/15/2025 at 5:39:39 PM
Apple does photo recognition on your device.Google, on the other hand, uploads photos to their server and does the analysis there.
There is the infamous case of the parents who Google tried to have arrested after they used their Android device to seek medical assistance for their child during lockdown. Their doctor asked them to send images of the problem, and Google called the police and reported the parents for kiddie porn.
> “I knew that these companies were watching and that privacy is not what we would hope it to be,” Mark said. “But I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The police agreed. Google did not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
Google refused to return access to his account even after the police cleared him of wrongdoing.
by GeekyBear
1/15/2025 at 11:30:17 PM
Google's reputation with privacy advocates is absolutely horrible, but that shouldn't have anything to do with Apple's practices. Comparing Apple and Google will indeed tell you a lot of interesting things, but that's not what this is about.by jchw
1/16/2025 at 4:33:03 AM
Kind of feels like it should be a crime for a private party to attempt to write terms into a contract that introduce punishments justified in terms of law, where that justification is based on an interpretation of law that's already been legally proven to the author of the contract to be a misinterpretation of said law.It's sort of the crime of "contempt of court", but after the fact: receiving a judge's prescription about how you must interpret a law during a case, but then going right back to using a different interpretation when you leave court.
by derefr
1/15/2025 at 10:57:37 PM
> Google refused to return access to his account even after the police cleared him of wrongdoing.This is why I constantly work to help people reduce their dependence on Google. Screw that. If anyone ever tells you that they rely on Google for anything, show them this article.
by throw10920
1/17/2025 at 2:59:33 AM
I don't want to set up my own email server.But I definitely live in fear of Google fucking up and disabling my account.
by brokenmachine
1/16/2025 at 12:03:53 PM
> Apple does photo recognition on your device.> Google, on the other hand, uploads photos to their server and does the analysis there.
The comment you're replying to (and the whole sub-thread in fact) isn't about if how Apple is doing it is the best/worst way, but rather before they do it, they don't ask for permission. Regardless of how they technically do it, the fact that they don't ask beforehand is what is being argued about here.
by diggan
1/16/2025 at 12:56:20 AM
Google doesn't send your pictures to their servers without your explicit consent. This is exactly what users expect. On Android, you can use your own self-hosted photos server and have it work exactly the same way Google Photos does. Google Photos does not have access to private Google-only APIs like Apple Photos has on iOS.by lern_too_spel
1/16/2025 at 2:23:05 AM
> Google doesn't send your pictures to their servers without your explicit consent.The parents Google tried to get arrested in the story above do not agree.
> When Mark’s and Cassio’s photos were automatically uploaded from their phones to Google’s servers, this technology flagged them. Jon Callas of the E.F.F. called the scanning intrusive, saying a family photo album on someone’s personal device should be a “private sphere.” (A Google spokeswoman said the company scans only when an “affirmative action” is taken by a user; that includes when the user’s phone backs up photos to the company’s cloud.)
Google not only automatically uploaded their images to their server, it analyzed those images and reported the users to the police for kiddie porn based on a single false positive.
by GeekyBear
1/17/2025 at 3:05:13 AM
When I first ran Google Photos on my Android phone, it asked me if I want to enable automatic backup to Google. There were definitely some dark patterns there, but it was easy and obvious how to opt out.If you care about not sending photos to Google, it's pretty obvious how to not have that happen.
IMO, Google is not the bad guy here, although when it was explained to them that the photos were legitimate, they should definitely have reenabled the account.
I'm OK with Google scanning photos that I send to them that will be stored on their servers. Honestly, how can they not?
by brokenmachine
1/16/2025 at 2:51:22 AM
> user’s phone backs up photos to the company’s cloud.I never enable cloud backups, because it means my shit is sent somewhere.
by johnisgood
1/16/2025 at 3:19:38 AM
You don't have to enable it, since Google backs up your photos to their servers by default.Then they proceed to claim those automatic backups are an "affirmative action" that justifies them scanning the contents of your images as well.
by GeekyBear
1/16/2025 at 8:40:19 AM
>You don't have to enable it, since Google backs up your photos to their servers by default.When setting up a new phone (and many times thereafter) they prompt you to enable photos backup. It's not on by default if I remember correctly.
by fauigerzigerk
1/16/2025 at 3:42:30 PM
It is not enabled by default if we trust it. In fact, I am not even logged in to Google.by johnisgood
1/17/2025 at 3:06:52 AM
It's not on by default. It asks when you first add your account to Android.by brokenmachine
1/17/2025 at 3:11:46 AM
> Google backs up your photos to their servers by default.You keep saying that, but it remains false. The parents explicitly opted in to sending their photos to Google.
by lern_too_spel
1/16/2025 at 4:04:21 AM
Google Photos "consent" is one of the worst dark patterns I regularly encounter.About weekly it prompts me with a huge popup whether I want to continue without backup, with "enable backup" selected by default. If I deselect this I'm prompted with another popup asking me to back up specific selected photos. If I misclick either of these (which is easy, since they pop up after briefly showing my photos which I'm actively trying to tap on), then Google will start hoovering up all my photos without confirmation.
Their "consent" form is user-hostile and it's disingenuous to hold it as an example of Google protecting privacy.
Pro tip: install Google Gallery which (ironically) is effectively a de-Googled Photos. Unfortunately it's also stripped down in other ways but it suffices for simply viewing photos on your own device.
by colanderman
1/15/2025 at 6:15:53 PM
They are not sending your actual photo, as has been covered at length on numerous threads on this very site.by Klonoar
1/15/2025 at 7:18:22 PM
That's irrelevant if the information they do send is sufficient to deduce "Eiffel tower" or "dog" out of it: that's too much information to send.by gigel82
1/15/2025 at 8:41:36 PM
They don't have to send anything since they do all the image recognition on the user's own device.Sending everything to a server is, however, how Google's service works.
by GeekyBear
1/16/2025 at 12:45:48 AM
No they don't, the whole reason for Homomorphic encryption is sending stuff out of your device.You don't need any encryption to process locally.
by gigel82
1/16/2025 at 2:41:50 AM
The erroneous claim was that Apple handles image recognition and image search on servers, the way Google does.Apple handles those tasks on the users own device(s) for privacy reasons.
by GeekyBear
1/16/2025 at 10:26:34 AM
I don't think anyone made that claim in this thread.by rendaw
1/16/2025 at 4:15:08 PM
They do handle image recognition (at least some aspects of it) on their servers, unless you specifically went and disabled the right setting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685by gigel82
1/15/2025 at 12:20:31 PM
Not wrong, but it’s interesting that Apple gets so much flak for this when Google and Microsoft don’t even try. If anything they try to invade privacy as much as possible.Of course maybe that question has its own answer. Apple markets itself as the last personal computing company where you are the customer not the product so they are held to a higher standard.
What they should do Is do the processing locally while the phone is plugged in, and just tell people they need a better phone for that feature if it’s too slow. Or do it on their Mac if they own one while that is plugged in.
by api
1/15/2025 at 6:30:25 PM
FWIW, I work on homomorphic encryption at Google, and Google has all kinds of other (non-FHE) privacy enhancing tech, such as differential privacy, federated learning, and https://github.com/google/private-join-and-compute which are deployed at scale.Perhaps it's not as visible because Google hasn't defaulted to opt-in for most of these? Or because a lot of it is B2B and Google-internal (e.g., a differential-privacy layer on top of SQL for internal metrics)
[edit]: this link was a very vague press release that doesn't say exactly how Google uses it: https://security.googleblog.com/2019/06/helping-organization...
by j2kun
1/15/2025 at 8:33:09 PM
uhhh yeah it's not visible because it's not used for anything. because it runs contrary to Google's entire raison d'être. if it's not turned on by default, what is even the point of doing it at all other than to pacify engineers who are perfectly happy to miss the forest for the trees? it's kind of like saying that you have the power of invisibility, but it only works if no one is looking at you.by keeganpoppen
1/15/2025 at 1:19:14 PM
Well when you are building a feature that can only be appreciated by a subculture of people (privacy advocates), and they complain about the most basic faux pas that you could do in their culture (not asking them before you phone home with data derived from their data)... you have invited these people to criticise you.Most people I know of wouldn't care about such a feature other than a breathless sort of "Wow, Apple tech!" So they are building something which is intended to win over privacy conscious people, kudos to them, everyone stands to benefit. But the most basic custom in that subculture is consent. So they built something really great and then clumsily failed on the easiest detail because it is so meaningless to everyone except that target audience. To that audience, they don't bother criticising google or microsoft (again) because it goes without saying that those companies are terrible, it doesn't need to be said again.
by BlackFly
1/15/2025 at 2:07:27 PM
> a feature that can only be appreciated by a subculture of people (privacy advocates)Just because it can’t be “appreciated” by all users doesn’t mean it’s only “for” a small sub-group.
It seems to me they’re just trying to minimise the data they have access to — similar to private cloud compute — while keeping up with the features competitors provide in a less privacy-respecting way. Them not asking for permission makes it even more obvious to me that it’s not built for any small super privacy-conscious group of people but the vast majority of their customers instead.
by ylk
1/15/2025 at 1:26:43 PM
[dead]by Helloyello
1/15/2025 at 7:21:15 PM
"not asking them before you phone home with data" is a basic faux pas for privacy advocates? LOL; that's a fundamental breach of trust of the highest degree, not basic by any means.by gigel82
1/15/2025 at 8:16:29 PM
Are you under the impression that "basic" and "fundamental" are not synonyms?by Dylan16807
1/15/2025 at 3:09:55 PM
> just tell people they need a better phone for that feature if it’s too slow. Or do it on their Mac if they own one while that is plugged in.The issue isn't slowness. Uploading photo library data/metadata is likely always slower than on-device processing. Apparently the issue in this case is that the world locations database is too large to be stored locally.
by lapcat
1/15/2025 at 5:52:06 PM
>> Apparently the issue in this case is that the world locations database is too large to be stored locally.What kind of capacity can ROM chips have these days? And at what cost?
by phkahler
1/15/2025 at 12:25:58 PM
In other words: don't hate the player hate game, but the point still stands.by yard2010
1/15/2025 at 1:58:24 PM
The game, unlike Apple's policy, is opt-in. Hate the player and the game.by drawkward
1/15/2025 at 12:30:57 PM
Whataboutisms aren't all the great you know. Google and MS also get flak, and they also deserve it.But now that we're talking about these differences, I'd say that Apple users are notoriously complacent and defend Apple and their practices. So, perhaps in some part it is in an attempt to compensate for that? I'm still surprised how we've now accepted that Apple receives information pretty much every time we run a process (or rather, if it ran more than 12 hours ago, or has been changed).
by okamiueru
1/15/2025 at 2:18:25 PM
You can always find someone worse. Does not mean we should not critise people/organizations.You think Trump is bad? Well, Putin is worse. You think Putin is bad? Kim Jong Un is worse.
by victorbjorklund
1/15/2025 at 2:22:58 PM
And who's worse than kim?by beretguy
1/15/2025 at 2:26:45 PM
Kier Starmer, if you ask Elonby camjw
1/15/2025 at 4:32:15 PM
Doesn't Photos.app on iOS sync with iCloud OOTB?by butlike
1/15/2025 at 11:23:25 PM
Optionally, yesby louthy
1/16/2025 at 5:57:56 AM
And it nags the hell outta you if you opt out.by jimt1234
1/15/2025 at 1:09:24 PM
It doesn't really matter if they ask you or not, ultimately you have to trust them, and if you don't trust Apple, why would you even use an iPhone?by tempworkac
1/15/2025 at 3:12:42 PM
Trust is never all or nothing. I trust Apple to an extent, but trust needs to be earned and maintained. I trust my mom, but if she suggested installing video cameras in my home for my "safety", or worse, she secretly installed video cameras in my home, then she would lose my trust.Likewise, you need to trust your spouse or significant other, but if there are obvious signs of cheating, then you need to be suspicious.
An essential part of trust is not overstepping boundaries. In this case, I believe that Apple did overstep. If someone demands that you trust them blindly and unconditionally, that's actually a sign you shouldn't trust them.
by lapcat
1/15/2025 at 6:34:28 PM
> If someone demands that you trust them blindly and unconditionally, that's actually a sign you shouldn't trust them.That's certainly a take, which you're clearly entitled to take. I don't disagree with the point that you make; this ought to have been opt in.
What you should do now is acknowledge this in your original post and then explain why they should have been more careful about how they released this feature. Homomorphic encryption of the data reframes what you wrote somewhat. Even though data is being sent back, Apple never knows what the data is.
by sbuk
1/15/2025 at 7:58:49 PM
> What you should do now is acknowledge this in your original post and then explain why they should have been more careful about how they released this feature. Homomorphic encryption of the data reframes what you wrote somewhat.Do you mean my original blog post? The one that not only mentions homomorphic encryption but also links to Apple's own blog post about it? I don't know how that can "reframe" what I wrote when it already framed it.
by lapcat
1/16/2025 at 1:19:52 AM
I apologise, I didn't fully read your original article as I find that your writing is prone to exaggeration. I've reread it a few times now and I stand by what I said. You mention homomorphic encryption only in a quoted piece of text and a link. You utterly fail to explain what it is. You didn't frame it at all. You hand-waived at it. I don't disagree with you on the point about this being opt in, but your blog post is a massive overreaction, heavy on prose and opinion, but light on any tangible facts.by sbuk
1/16/2025 at 2:20:39 AM
> I apologiseWow, that's some apology. Everything after those words is an insult.
by lapcat
1/15/2025 at 1:22:58 PM
How can you trust any mainstream "working" iPhone or Android device? You already mentioned open source android distros. You mean those where no banking or streaming device app works because you have to use a replacement for gapps and the root / open bootloader prevents any form of DRM? That is not really an option for most people. I would love to have a Linux phone even with terrible user experience as long as I do not lose touch with society. That however seems to be an impossible task.by razemio
1/15/2025 at 11:32:03 PM
You don't trust Apple's and Google's mobile phones. And some bank doesn't trust open source android distros on mobile phones. Those are both fine positions. You are free to move to another bank, just like the bank is free to not accept you as a customer.by warkdarrior
1/15/2025 at 1:28:10 PM
I'm curious what functions other than maybe depositing a check requires a banking app?by tempworkac
1/16/2025 at 5:17:20 PM
When I'm in Canada I often transfer money (interac e-transfers). I always use the website, even on mobile, but the website has some arbitrary limits than the app does not. For example I can only transfer $1,000 at a time, the app allows $10,000. There's also a limit of recipients per day.My charitable interpretation is that the app allows a greater verification process so the bank trusts it more and it's "to protect me, the user". But then, the website lets me transfer $100,000 using a multitude of other methods if I want (wire, e-check, create carrier check), so... yeah.
by tredre3
1/15/2025 at 2:14:28 PM
Depends where you live. In the US, probably not much, but in other countries where transfers are ubiquitous, being unable to use a banking app could be a real problem.by bitdivision
1/15/2025 at 2:40:17 PM
are there really countries where the bank doesn't have a website you can use to do a transfer, but you could do it through an app?by tempworkac
1/15/2025 at 3:28:15 PM
I don't know, though certainly the experience is a lot simpler without the 15 minute timeout, painful login, and extra security checks I see on web banking.Edit: Not to mention that many of the newer banks don't even have web banking. It's app only. Of course, its your choice to open an account there though
by bitdivision
1/15/2025 at 6:37:34 PM
In Germany and I think the whole EU 2 factor authentication is mandatory, for which the favored implementation is an app. SMS TAN is out, the alternative is a secondary device you stick your card into.by solarkraft
1/15/2025 at 8:22:00 PM
Do you need a proprietary app for that? TOTP is fine, you can just pick your own.by Dylan16807
1/15/2025 at 9:41:20 PM
Haven't seen a bank offering software TOTP in Poland. Over a decade ago, before smartphones became ubiquitous, I've seen a bank offering a physical TOTP device. These days, as far as I've seen, it's either SMS codes or single use codes on a physical scratch cards (haven't seen one in 5 years, though), or in-app confirmation.by TeMPOraL
1/16/2025 at 1:25:52 AM
Yes and they tend to be shoddily programmed security theater. My bank makes me use SecureGo plus, which goes as far as redirecting you to a website telling you screenshots aren’t allowed when you try to document its latest glitch (which may be another misguided “security” feature, who knows).by solarkraft
1/16/2025 at 12:15:54 PM
In Germany you can use the website BUT you still need the app for 2fa. SMS is no longer an option for most banks, because it is considered insecure. Same goes for TOTP since this can easily be replicated, if you have access to the device generating the TOTP.by razemio
1/15/2025 at 6:39:26 PM
No, but there are bank accounts that are app only. Monzo in the UK is a popular example.by sbuk
1/16/2025 at 10:21:00 AM
Bank transfers, online purchases (most banks reqire 3DS now and usually won't let you buy things online without the app on a phone), some don't have a web interface, and others if they do require you to approve the login to that from the appby Eavolution
1/15/2025 at 1:12:51 PM
As they didn't ask, I will trust them lessby chikere232
1/15/2025 at 1:15:00 PM
why use a device by someone you don't trust? honestly don't get it. I'd use an open source android distroby tempworkac
1/15/2025 at 7:29:11 PM
It doesn't have to be binary. I have some trust for apple. They've earned it in various ways by caring for privacy.When they start opting me into photo scanning I lose a bit of trust. The homomorphic encryption makes it less bad. The relative quiet around the rollout of the feature makes it worse. Apple's past attempt to start client side scanning makes it worse. Etc...
The net result is I trust them a bit less. Perhaps not enough to set my apple devices on fire yet, but a bit.
by chikere232
1/15/2025 at 2:00:13 PM
I am merely a data scientist, so don't really know a ton about mainline programming beyond a few intro CS courses.Why would an open source android distro be more trustworthy?
by drawkward
1/15/2025 at 5:39:44 PM
Here is my simplified take on it which will likely get me flamed.Trust has many meanings but for this discussion we’ll consider privacy and security. As in, I trust my phone to not do something malicious as a result of outside influence, and I trust it to not leak data that I don’t want other people to know.
Open source software is not inherently more secure nor more private. However it can sometimes be more secure (because more people are helping find bugs, because that specific project prioritizes security, etc.) and is usually more private. Why? Because it (usually) isn’t controlled by a single central entity, which means there is (usually) no incentive to collect user data.
In reality it’s all kind of a mess and means nothing. There’s tons of bugs in open source software, and projects like Audacity prove they sometimes violate user privacy. HN-type people consider open source software more secure and private because you can view the source code yourself, but I guarantee you they have not personally reviewed the source of all the software they use.
If you want to use an open-source Android distro I think you would learn a lot. You don’t need to have a CS degree. However unless you made massive lifestyle changes in addition to changing your phone, I’m not confident it would meaningfully make you more secure or private.
by subjectsigma
1/15/2025 at 8:15:30 PM
It was a bit of a strawman question anyway; as someone who could review the source myself but wont (because the pain-to-utility threshold is way too high) I am then required to place my trust in some ad-hoc entity (the open-source community), that doesn't actually have a financial disincentive to make sure things aren't bad.I have other reasons, perhaps, to prefer open source stuff, but I am not ready to assume it is inherently more private or secure.
by drawkward
1/16/2025 at 3:39:30 AM
Sorry, I lost some context in the thread or something because I thought you were asking as someone who legitimately didn’t know what open source was. Which I thought was kind of weird for HN but didn’t put two and two together.by subjectsigma
1/15/2025 at 2:01:38 PM
To your point, you can’t even trust the software if the hardware is untrustedby internetter
1/16/2025 at 1:34:01 PM
A quick shoutout to Ente Photos[0]. FOSS with an opt-in locally-run semantic search of your photos. The first encoding with a ton of photos may take a few minutes in the background, but after that it takes no time with subsequent photo uploads. I'm not sure why Apple is going through the trouble of uploading the photos and incorporating homomorphic encryption for something this simple, particularly with their push for local AI and their Neural Engine[2].I also appreciate Ente's Guest View[1] that lets you select the photos you want to show someone in person on your phone to prevent the issue of them scrolling too far.
[0] https://github.com/ente-io/ente
by prophesi
1/15/2025 at 8:54:08 AM
Android does this too. I don't really want all my photos indexed like that, I just want a linear timeline of photos, but I cant turn off their "memories" thing or all the analysis they do to themby voidUpdate
1/15/2025 at 10:54:17 AM
Android doesn't do this. Everything is opt-in.Granted they require you to opt-in in order for the photos app to be usable & if you go out of your way to avoid opting in they make your photo-browsing life miserable with prompts & notifications. But you do still have to opt-in.
by lucideer
1/15/2025 at 12:11:57 PM
Google loves doing this.If you dare turn off Play Protect for example, you will be asked to turn it on every time you install or update anything. Never mind that you said no the last thousand times it asked.
by alex7734
1/16/2025 at 12:07:49 PM
> Google loves doing this.Tech companies love doing this. Apple does the same, so does Microsoft.
If you know some choice isn't right for you (now or forever), the company is feeling extra beautiful today, and you're in luck, you'll get a "Do this now, or I'll remind you later" choice. But then sometimes they just decide that "This is how things are now".
I've had this happen in every environment except Linux, where I get to shoot myself in the foot whenever I want, and sometimes a bit more.
by diggan
1/15/2025 at 2:22:28 PM
It says it's "opt in" but as someone who hasn't opted in, I still get the notifications and I can see a split second preview of all the stuff they're not supposed to have computed before it asks me to opt in. So there's DEFINITELY shenanigans ocurring.by Enginerrrd
1/15/2025 at 11:45:47 AM
A number of good third-party photo-browsing apps make it non-miserable, even if you never open Google Photos or even uninstall it.by nine_k
1/15/2025 at 12:19:04 PM
I've seen a lot of people saying this generally but no specific recommendations.I've used Simple Gallery Pro before but it's not very good.
Currently using Immich but that's not really a general photo app - it's got a narrow use case - so I still use the Google Photos app alongside it quite often.
Specific alternative recommendations that aren't malware welcome.
by lucideer
1/15/2025 at 8:34:42 PM
> I've used Simple Gallery Pro before but it's not very good.It's rock solid for me. you can browse folders move, copy, hide small edits. you can't search 'dog' which is a plus, it doesn't scan faces.
by dvngnt_
1/16/2025 at 9:57:14 AM
you might want to look into fossify.org as simple tools(of which simple gallery pro was a part of) has been sold to an israeli adware company.see: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issu...
by gnuly
1/15/2025 at 1:18:49 PM
It depends which features you need, but interestingly Google has another, lighter weight gallery app called Google Gallery that does not have any cloud features built in.by marmight
1/15/2025 at 2:13:44 PM
Simple Gallery Pro is what I use, and it seems fine to me. What do you think should be added to it, or altered? Just curious how other people see UX.by nine_k
1/15/2025 at 4:26:24 PM
I can't personally vouch for it as I'm still stuck in Google Photos and would prefer to self-host it, but Ente may interest you. Open source, end-to-end encrypted, self-host or cloud.by pertique
1/15/2025 at 5:12:50 PM
I'm really happy with Immich & not looking for a replacement. Evaluated it vs Ente in the past & went with it instead - as far as I could tell their apps have the same features & limitations (focus on remote backup & display rather than on local on-device photo management & basic markup/editing).If (like me) you don't need e2e I can highly recommend Immich for its use-case though.
by lucideer
1/16/2025 at 10:01:17 AM
i use aves[1] which has many features. especially useful if you travel and take pictures a lot.by gnuly
1/15/2025 at 1:29:44 PM
Fossify Gallery (on Fdroid or Google store) works quite nicely for me as a nice and simple photo viewer and management app.by ckae
1/15/2025 at 2:19:43 PM
> or even uninstall itUnfortunately google's camera app will only open google photos if you click the image preview after taking one. Just doesn't respect the default gallery app setting at all.
by Ghoelian
1/15/2025 at 10:50:10 AM
I don't think Android does that. It's only Google Photo and only if you upload them to the cloud, if you don't sync/upload them, you can't search them with specific terms.by y04nn
1/15/2025 at 11:35:43 AM
Samsung at least does these "dog" cataloguing & searches entirely on-device, as trivially checked by disabling all network connectivity and taking a picture. It may ping home for several other reasons, though.by AshamedCaptain
1/15/2025 at 1:17:25 PM
Apple also does the vast majority of photo categorization on device, and has for years over multiple major releases. Foods, drinks, many types of animals including specific breeds, OCRing all text on the image even when massively distorted, etc.This feature is some new "landmark" detection and it feels like it's a trial balloon or something as it simply makes zero sense unless what they are categorizing as landmarks is enormous. The example is always the Eiffel tower, but the data to identify most of the world's major landmarks is small relative to what the device can already detect, not to mention that such lookups don't even need photo identification and could instead (and actually already do and long have) use simple location data and nearby POIs for such metadata tagging.
The landmarks thing is the beginning, but I feel like they want it to be much more detailed. Like every piece of art, model of car, etc, including as they change with new releases, etc.
by llm_nerd
1/15/2025 at 12:53:25 PM
Does or doesn't. You can't really tell if and when it does any cataloguing; best I've managed to observe is that you can increase chances of it happening if you keep your phone plugged in to a charger for extended periods of time.That's the problem with all those implementations: no feedback of any kind. No list of recognized tags. No information of what is or is to be processed. No nothing. Just magic that doesn't work.
by TeMPOraL
1/15/2025 at 1:39:02 PM
With embeddings, there might not be tags to display. Instead of labeling the photo with a tag of “dog”, it might just check whether the embedding of each photo is within some vector distance of the embedding of your search text.by reaperman
1/15/2025 at 3:11:16 PM
Yes and no. Embeddings can be used in both directions - if you can find images closest to some entries in a search text, you can also identify tokens or phrases closest in space to any image or cluster of images, and output that. It's a problem long solved in many different ways, including but not limited to e.g.:https://github.com/pythongosssss/ComfyUI-WD14-Tagger
which uses specific models to generate proper booru tags out of any image you pass to it.
More importantly, I know for sure they have this capability in practice, because if you tap the right way in the right app, when the Moon is in just the right phase, both Samsung Gallery and OneDrive Photos does (or in case of OneDrive, used to):
- Provide occasional completions and suggestions for predefined categories, like "sunset" or "outwear" or "people", etc.;
- Auto-tag photos with some subset of those (OneDrive, which also sometimes records it in metadata), or if you use "edit tag" options, suggest best fitting tags (Samsung);
- Have a semi-random list of "Things" to choose from to categorize your photos, such as "Sunsets", "City", "Outdoors", "Room", etc. Google Photos does that one too.
This shows they do maintain a list of correct and recommended classifications. They just choose to keep it hidden.
With regards to face recognition, it's even worse. There's zero controls and zero information other than occasionally matched (and often mismatched) face under photo properties, that you can sometimes delete.
by TeMPOraL
1/15/2025 at 9:11:31 AM
The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date". My old Android with whatever Photos app came with it (not Google's) shows this despite being disconnected for so long.There's nothing stopping either Apple or Google from giving users an option to just disable these connected features, globally or per-app. Just allow a "no cloud services" toggle switch in the Photos app, get the warning that $FEATURES will stop working, and be done.
I know why Google isn't doing this, they're definitely monetizing every bit of that analyzed content. Not really sure about Apple though, might be that they consider their setup with HE as being on par with no cloud connectivity privacy wise.
by buran77
1/15/2025 at 9:23:30 AM
"memories" constantly given me notifications about "similar shots" at random, so I'm assuming it is trying to analyse the content of the photos. I managed to disable the notifications, but not the actual analysisby voidUpdate
1/15/2025 at 2:15:19 PM
> The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date".It’s more. It also can create memories “trip to New York in 2020”, “Cityscapes in New York over the years”, or “Peter over the years” (with Peter being a person added to Photos)
by Someone
1/15/2025 at 9:30:43 AM
No Android phone I've ever owned automatically uploaded your photos without asking. What exactly do you mean that it does too?by Aachen
1/15/2025 at 9:34:09 AM
Uninstall Google photos and install a dumb photos app. I think most android phones don't even come with Google photos pre installed.by ranguna
1/15/2025 at 10:30:34 AM
Dumb Photo App by Nefarious DataExfiltration Co & Sonby TheSpiceIsLife
1/15/2025 at 11:24:04 AM
Fossify galleryby tcfhgj
1/15/2025 at 11:31:30 AM
This is what the "Allow Network permission" checkbox in the app installation dialog on GrapheneOS is for.by ThePowerOfFuet
1/15/2025 at 11:12:46 AM
uninstall(disable) stock Google Photos app and install `gallery2.apk`. You can download one from sketchy github repos, or I think you can alternatively extract from Emulator image.by numpad0
1/15/2025 at 11:47:56 AM
Why, install a non-sketchy open-source gallery app from F-Droid.by nine_k
1/15/2025 at 12:36:02 PM
What if you're a user and you're fed up with all the "magic"? What if you want a device that works reliably, consistently, and in ways you can understand from empirical observation if you pay attention?Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, they all seem to be tripping over each other in an effort to make this whole thing just as much ass-backwards as possible. Here is how it, IMHO, should work:
1) It scans stuff, detects faces and features. Locally or in the cloud or not at all, as governed by an explicit opt-in setting.
2) Fuck search. Search is not discoverable. I want to browse stuff. I want a list of objects/tags/concepts it recognized. I want a list of faces it recognized and the ability to manually retag them, and manually mark any that they missed. And not just a list of 10 categories the vendor thinks are most interesting. All of them. Alphabetically.
3) If you insist on search, make it work. I type in a word, I want all photos tagged with it. I click on a face, I want all photos that have matching face on it. Simple as that. Not "eventual consistency", not "keep refreshing, every 5th refresh I may show you a result", or other such breakage that's a staple experience of OneDrive Photos in particular.
Don't know about Apple, but Google, Microsoft and Samsung all refuse #2, and spectacularly fail at #3, and the way it works, I'm convinced it's intentional, as I can't even conceptualize a design that would exhibit such failures naturally.
EDIT:
4) (A cherry on a cake of making a sane product that works) Recognition data is stored in photo metadata, whether directly or in a sidecar file, in any of a bunch of formats sane people use, and is both exported along with the photos, and adhered to when importing new photos.
by TeMPOraL
1/15/2025 at 11:34:42 PM
> What if you're a user and you're fed up with all the "magic"?This is a completely hypothetical scenario. If users with such requirements actually existed, PinePhones and similar devices would be significantly more popular.
by warkdarrior
1/16/2025 at 12:23:50 AM
It's not hypothetical. Plenty of open source software tries to address it. For example, DigiKam does everything I listed 100% right. Problem is, it's desktop-only and geared for local photos. An equivalent solution could exist for phones and handle cloud albums, but the mobile and cloud vendors don't want to do it, and make it hard on purpose for any third party to try.by TeMPOraL
1/16/2025 at 2:13:00 AM
It’s absolutely not hypothetical.by layer8
1/15/2025 at 5:26:20 PM
You can vote with your wallet and get a Pine Phone or something similar, I guess.by plandis
1/16/2025 at 1:31:20 AM
[dead]by Raymond122
1/15/2025 at 9:00:40 AM
Well, not vouching for automated scanning or whatever, but the advantage of homomorphic encryption is that besides the power usage for the computation and the bandwidth to transmit the data, Apple doesn't learn anything about what's in your photos, only you can. So even if you don't use the feature, the impact is minimal for youby oulipo
1/15/2025 at 1:58:53 PM
So don’t use the photos app. Just get an alternative camera app and you bypass all of this.by abtinf
1/15/2025 at 2:26:00 PM
It's opt-in by default so you can't "bypass" it unless you are aware that you can turn it off. If you don't turn it off, it will continue to scan your photos, and upload the data to Apple, whether you use the Photos app or not. (And, by the way, if the option to "learn from this app" is enabled (which is again, by default opt-in) iPadOS / ios also will be intrusively data collecting how you use that alternative camera app too ...by thisislife2