This alone would make me more likely to switch back to iPhone, as much as I hate the walled garden. “Just switch to a private messenger app” doesn’t really work when no one else uses them. I’ve even gotten all of my family to try Signal, but they dropped it in favor of going back to imessage. It’s extremely frustrating, far from ideal, but it is what it is.
Google reading my messages at all, even if it’s “oPt OuT”, is a complete non starter.
They dropped it because people assumed it was secure just because they used signal, and is never secure and you can assume pretty much anyone could be reading your texts wanyway.
There are three big reasons why we’re removing SMS support for the Android app now: prioritizing security and privacy, ensuring people aren’t hit with unexpected messaging bills, and creating a clear and intelligible user experience for anyone sending messages on Signal.
To me, all of those reasons are BS and easily gotten around. “Unexpected messaging bills?” Have a popup that warns you that this user doesn’t have an account and is about to send a SMS, potentially incurring a cost, as an example.
Having a unified app that supports your message protocol with SMS fallback is legitimately great. I’m still bitter signal canned that feature.
But it isn’t that big of a deal to just use two apps. It’s what I’ve had to do for a while now. Anyone I actually know goes into signal, and I use SMS for my boss, my dad, and various companies.
Not all AI is bad. In the healthcare sector it could improve decision-making, produce personalised treatment plans, and so forth.
Obviously, the healthcare professionals will have final say, but it’s a good tool to have. AI will not replace them. Though it will streamline cumbersome processes.
I am all for AI as long as it’s used in a non-dystopian manner.
Isn’t that what the doctor is already supposed to be doing? Looking at our history, charts, treatment attempts and customizing? Because if not I could just WebMD and pay a doc to write a scrip.
There are a lot of things doctors record in evaluations, and they feed these AIs this information and instead of these AIs spitting out a “diagnosis” they calculate risk of harm vs risk of further investigation.
In things like pediatrics, this reduces the need for unpleasant and dangerous procedures - a CT scan impacts a 6 year old way more than a 30 year old.
AI is extremely useful for problem domains with a ton of input, medicine being one. Doctors can only do so much and rely on algorithms just like the AI does. The AI has the benefit of being able to do it a fuckload faster, more accurately, and compare it to more relevant things.
Don’t confuse it with generative AI. this is a very different system than that.
There are already talks of military use, reading all your texts, eliminating jobs with no plan to support those who lost them, AI driven cars killing people, taking all creative work from humans and leaving the menial tasks…that’s nowhere near a complete list and it’s already dystopian.
The thing is, when private companies are the ones that hold the tech and monetize it, shit is going to get dystopian before you can say “artichoke.” Capitalism is dystopian. Late stage capitalism even more so. And we are fast approaching a new frontier in which these same evil tech companies will wield this unbelievable power. I get it. There are good uses. But when the end goal is profit, our best interest comes second, if not last.
It’s a tool like anything else. It’ll be used for everything like anything else. It cannot be stopped. All we can hope for are tools to mitigate the damage and applications to outweigh what bad it’s capable of. Trying to slow it down is like trying to stop a flood with buckets. Build a boat, it will only keep rising.
Maybe I’m just old and stuck in my ways, but I don’t see the upside here. Why would I need Google’s AI to be able to tell the tone of my messages and respond appropriately. They’re my messages. People send me messages to talk to me. In what world do I want to remove myself from that process?
If my wife texts me and says “when are you going to be home from work?” I don’t want an AI looking at my chat history and making a guess. I want to tell her what I have going on right now and respond. If a friend asks me if I wanna hang out this weekend, I don’t want AI checking my calendar and seeing I’m free and then agreeing to plans. I want to think about it and come to a decision myself.
Can someone smarter than me point to an actual good use case for this?
this is almost like when people traded baubles for valuable things to unknowing natives. corporations make these inane features and expect us to pay for them by giving them all our information. They dont bother to even ask, just assume we are ok with it by having all this crap on by default.
Suppressing repeated notifications has been a thing since messaging has been a thing. If your service doesn’t offer it, find a better one. Also, this is a hypothetical, and a bad one. Why would you not simply read the texts?
Apple always had been painfull for any third party devs. Also Vivaldi worked several years to create a browser which works in this iPhone thing, and now, after it’s release, Apple admits Chromium. https://file.coffee/u/BPIaDNFX7YJkKtXuMdWNJ.gif
Google has just unveiled a game-changing AI upgrade for Android. But it has a darker side. Google’s AI will start to read and analyze your private messages, going back forever. So what does this mean for you, how do you maintain your privacy, and when does it begin.
Smartphone privacy is about to change forever
Google’s AI to begin analyzing private messages on Android smartphonesgetty
There’s understandable excitement that Google is bringing Bard to Messages. A readymade ChatGPT-like UI for a readymade user base of hundreds of millions. “It’s an AI assistant,” says Bard, “that can improve your messaging experience… from facilitating communication to enhancing creativity and providing information… it will be your personal AI assistant within your messaging app.”
But Bard will also analyze the private content of messages “to understand the context of your conversations, your tone, and your interests.” It will analyze the sentiment of your messages, “to tailor its responses to your mood and vibe.” And it will “analyze your message history with different contacts to understand your relationship dynamics… to personalize responses based on who you’re talking to.”
And so here comes the next privacy battlefield for smartphone owners still coming to terms with app permissions, privacy labels and tracking transparency, and with all those voice AI assistant eavesdropping scandals still fresh in the memory. Google’s challenge will be convincing users that this doesn’t open the door to the same kind of privacy nightmares we’ve seen before, where user content and AI platforms meet.
There will be another, less contentious privacy issue with your Messages requests to Bard. These will be sent to the cloud for processing, used for training and maybe seen by humans—albeit anonymized. This data will be stored for 18-months, and will persist for a few days even if you disable the AI, albeit manual deletion is available. MORE FOR YOU Trustworthy AI: String Of AI Fails Show Self-Regulation Doesn’t Work The Best Record Players For Beginners To Spin Vinyl Music The Technological Marvel Behind A Real Bug s Life MORE FROM FORBESGoogle Issues New Incognito Guidance For Chrome Users By Zak Doffman
Such requests fall outside Google Messages newly default end-to-end encryption—you’re literally messaging Google itself. While this is non-contentious, it’s worth bearing in mind. Just as with all generative AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, you need to assume anything you ask is non-private and could come back to haunt you.
But message analysis is different. This is content that does (now) fall inside that end-to-end encryption shield, in a world where such private messaging is the new normal. Here the push should be for on-device AI analysis, with data never leaving your phone, rather than content uploaded to the cloud, where more processing can be put to work.
This is where the Android Vs iPhone battlefield may well come into play. Historically, Apple has been much stronger when it comes to on-device analysis than Google, which has historically defaulted to the cloud to analyze user content.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s own moves to bring generative AI to iPhone users will take that approach—on-device analysis as the default when it comes to user content, albeit with a carve-out for its request architecture. And there’s building excitement as to what might be on offer with this fall’s iOS 18.
“Apple is quietly increasing its capabilities,” The FT reported this week, “to bring AI to its next generation of iPhones… Apple’s goal appears to be operating generative AI through mobile devices, to allow AI chatbots and apps to run on the phone’s own hardware and software rather than be powered by cloud services in data centres.”
For its part, Bard says that “Google has assured that all Bard analysis would happen on your device, meaning your messages wouldn’t be sent to any servers. Additionally, you would have complete control over what data Bard analyzes and how it uses it.”
You will have to judge whether this gives you comfort enough to let Bard loose on your private content. A word of caution. There’s a difference between what can’t be done, such as breaching end-to-end encryption, and what isn’t being done, such as policies as to where content analysis takes place. I would urge strong caution on opening up your content too freely, unless and until we have seen proper safeguards.
Bard agrees. “While Google assures on-device analysis,” it says, “any data accessed by Bard is technically collected, even temporarily. Concerns arise about potential leaks, misuse, or hidden data sharing practices. The extent of Bard’s analysis and how it uses your data should be transparent. Users deserve granular control over what data is analyzed, for what purposes, and how long it’s stored.” MORE FROM FORBESHow To Change Your Google Maps Settings After Street View Warning By Zak Doffman
Bard also warns that such data analysis might bias its results. “AI algorithms can perpetuate biases present in the data they’re trained on. Analyzing messages could lead to unintended profiling based on language, demographics, or social circles.”
This integration of generative AI chat and messaging will transform texting platforms forever, it will quickly open up a new competitive angle between Google, Apple and Meta, whose smartphone ecosystems and apps run our lives.
“While an exact date is still unknown,” Bard says, “all signs point towards Bard’s arrival in Google Messages sometime in 2024. It could be a matter of weeks or months, but it’s definitely coming.” Meanwhile, what we’ve seen thus far remains buried deep inside a beta release and subject to change before release.
When it is live, think carefully before you unlock your Messages privacy settings. “Ultimately,” says Bard, “the decision of whether to use message analysis rests with you. Carefully weigh the potential benefits against the privacy concerns and make an informed choice based on your own comfort level and expectations.”
The analysis of your message history isn’t the only word of caution here. This deployment of Bard is just part of the shift from browser-based to directed search, and you will need to be increasingly cautious as to the quality of the results you’re being given. Bard isn’t a chat with a friend. It’s a UI sitting across the world’s most powerful and valuable advertising and tracking machine.
On which note, Bard left me with a final thought that might be better directed at its creators than its users: “Remember, you have the right to demand clarity, control, and responsible AI development from the companies you trust with your data.”
We need an antitrust law that defines a monopoly by size/revenue of company statically by percent of US GDP, US wealth, or revenue in a particular industry. Not something g that allows the “well it feels fine” kind of defense these companies can pull.
This assumes the only source these companies collect from is your internet traffic. It’s not.
And even if it was, VPNs don’t protect against fingerprinting.
For the past few months I’ve been using kanary which is a service that searches for your information on hundreds of different data mining sources and submits deletion requests for you.
I started with ~225 exposures and it’s gone down over time but I’m still sitting at ~50 exposures and it seems to have plateaued.
This information was data like who I’d married and when, past and current addresses, family members, etc. None of which was gleaned from internet traffic.
Right, but you’re talking about two distinctly different things. The ISP doesn’t own the websites you visit. They only have a record of your traffic. The individual websites that you visit can bust your privacy through 3rd party cookies, browser fingerprinting, cross-site tracking, and a bunch of other methods created to circumvent the user security features built into the browser. Nobody shares that information back to the ISP for free. The real issues are that huge companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have scripts running on millions of websites, so they can track you everywhere you go. But they’re still just single companies. The linchpin is that they then sell that information to Big Data brokers like Cambridge Analytica, and Informatica. Those companies combine literally everything you do online, everything you submit, all your history, all your data points, and build these fully accurate pictures of you. You need to take proactive measures to prevent this sort of data harvesting that go well beyond a VPN. But your ISP doesn’t have these systems in place. So unless the ISP is buying your profile from Big Data, and then selling it to the NSA, having a VPN is enough to thwart your ISP, and the issue identified in the article. You still have to take a bunch of other precautions to prevent the larger issue if you truly want any anonymity, and they’ll probably figure you out anyways.
My wife has an iPad and one of the things I hate the most is that you can’t install adblock extensions into Firefox on it like you can on Android. Which is a thing that has made using the browser on the phone wayyyy more enjoyable.
I use AdGuard both on my Android phone and iPad. Not quite as good on the iPad because Apple doesn’t make it easy, but definitely makes a huge difference. For me, $30 a year is worth it and you can use it on 3 devices. I got sick of the ads in apps that were downright disturbing in some cases and reporting them didn’t do a whole lot. Browser extensions can do a lot more to tidy up the experience, but I will take what I can get.
I ended up getting it from them directly. I am on Android 90% of the time and don’t pay for the license from the Apple store. No idea if that one is a single device or the same as the multi-device. I tend to not do things from the Apple store as I don’t have an iPhone and they seem to want or assume you have one. Just like I can never use their watch (not that I want one).
The Orion browser for iOS/iPadOS supports both Firefox and Chromium extensions, however, the support is quite buggy and limited. Nonetheless, a valiant effort by Orion devs.
Because if it is the hardware you want to keep and not the software, there are good android based options. And if what you want is control over the software, there are also good android options. I’d recommend a Pixel phone, and you’ll always have the option to de-goggle it completely with either CalyxOs, GrapheneOs or similar ones.
I was more poking fun at how ios users who let an ultra mega corp holds all their data and actively cripples privacy efforts while touting a false sense of privacy as marketing, never ask to de-apple their iPhones
Cell phone tracking is common place. If you carry one, you’re being tracked, profiled and having your data correlated with others. The question is whether you support living in a surveillance society. If you do, grab a cell phone and be happy. If not, get rid of it and use alternative communication methods. It’s a simple choice. In my experience, most people choose convenience over privacy.
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