this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
557 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

77152 readers
2673 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Imma leave it.

All I get is fucking spam. Let them train on that shit and make Gemini even shittier than it already is. I swear, AI sucks major shit but Google's especially takes the cake for how shitty it is compared to all the others.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I left it last year for tutamail.

Its not fancy. But why the hell do I want fancy email?

I went yahoo for 'that mail'.

by 'that mail', nothing I use professionally, but need for entertainment, picky store accounts and food.

Steam, for instance thinks my domain email address is a temp email and won't let me use it, they don't think the same of yahoo.

[–] shifty@leminal.space 146 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

Not to be a downer, but I'm confident Google scans every email with AI regardless.

People should still opt out, but we know Gmail itself is entirely compromised.

[–] aurelar@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

Thanks for making it easy, friend. It takes a lot of clicking to turn this stuff off lol.

load more comments (2 replies)

You have been automatically OPTED IN to allow Gmail to access all your private messages & attachments to train AI models.

"Feature"

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 38 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I'm not seeing where any of this gives Google permission to train AI using your data. As far as I can see it's all about using AI to manage your data, which is a completely different thing. The word "training" appears to originate in Dave Jones' tweet, not in any of the Google pages being quoted. Is there any confirmation that this is actually happening, and not just a social media panic?

[–] m3t00@piefed.world 2 points 6 days ago

i probably agreed to 'smart' something, long ago for spellcheck and others. they've expanded those options a lot. i no longer need google spellcheck. firefox since the chrome went downhill

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The only option is smart features, on or off. That requires Google to read the email to categorize them and do a lot of basic stuff. It doesn't let you narrowly have more privacy on specific features. It's all or nothing, and if you get a lot of emails then it's hard to turn it off if you already use categories. Google always does all or nothing because they know people need some of it, same with location. It has to be precise location tracking to use things, you can't just do rough location.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Yes, but the point is that granting Google permission to manage your data by AI is a very different thing from training the AI on your data. You can do all the things you describe without also having the AI train on the data, indeed it's a hard bit of extra work to train the AI on the data as well.

If the setting isn't specifically saying that it's to let them train AI on your data then I'm inclined to believe that's not what it's for. They're very different processes, both technically and legally. I think there's just some click-baiting going on here with the scary "they're training on your data!" Accusation, it seems to be baseless.

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

It's not ai specific. It's literally everything including basic stuff like sorting newsletters into its own category. That's why I said it's all or nothing. It's just called " smart features" and they've had it for a decade, long before ai became a thing. But if you decline then you decline everything. That's how they do it. They make a huge category and if you decline then you decline everything including things that are considered pretty basic.

[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So you think that they're not using your data simply because they're not telling you that they are? Don't be naive. Since when are these companies asking for permission? I'm not even confident opting out does anything. At this point, your safest bet is to not use their services.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Toto@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Did I miss the part where they link how to opt out?

Edit: Instructions

[–] Xenny@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago

I just opted out of Gmail

[–] cb900f_bodhi@lemmynsfw.com 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Be aware that disabling this also disables categories in your email. It really sucks that they tied those together. But I need to get away from gmail anyway...

[–] artyom@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago

Good news, I already had that disabled

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 20 points 1 week ago (3 children)

That site is cancer on mobile. Can anyone TLDR this article for me?

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] madjo@feddit.nl 5 points 6 days ago

It would've been nice if malwarebytes had actually fact checked those steps to turn off smart features for the app on mobile. Because as they are right now, it only works on the desktop version of gmail.com despite what they claim in the steps themselves.

Here's how to turn it off on iOS:

  1. Open the gmail app
  2. Tap on the hamburger menu (top left) and scroll all the way down and tap on "Settings"
  3. Go to "Data privacy" option in the settings menu (they omitted this step on Malwarebytes)
  4. Turn off "Smart features"
[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 10 points 1 week ago

i closed reader view and scrolled just to see and wow the POPUPS and 50% of the page length being ads

WHAT

who uses the internet like this and finds it acceptable?!

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Google extended their Smart features with AI. It can be disabled in the settings, presumably if you haven't already.

I visited Gmail earlier today, and it gave me onboarding with information and the choice of enabling or not. I'm in the EU, dunno if that makes a difference.

[–] ApeNo1@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

On the web UI they sneakily slide in the Gemini icon exactly where the settings icon is after about 2 seconds of loading the page which caught me out for the first account I was updating. Really annoying.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I logged into my GMail account for the first time in years due to this (I normally just use it as an IMAP server.) The "smart features" were already turned off.

It would certainly be nice if we could have sources of information about these kinds of privacy issues that didn't lie their asses off constantly to create hysteria, but I guess that's too much to ask for.

Glad I have uBlock installed so at least this site didn't get any ad revenue from me.

[–] CovfefeKills@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

It was already on for me I had to disable it. I appreciate the warning.

[–] Minimac@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I deleted Gmail I won’t go there ever again

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] fizzle@quokk.au 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm honestly kinda surprised that Google is apparently not in fact doing this already and (according to the comments here) continues to not do so.

[–] Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They don’t give a shit about what the law or terms say. They’ll just do whatever and if caught pay pennies on the dollar in fines.

We’ve seen them do this and win time and time again with the google library project and other actions. All the AI companies are training on any and all data they have access to, laws be damned. It’s the MO for any new venture capital / tech project with unlimited profits if someone gets there first.

load more comments (1 replies)

good thing my gmail is full of spammy bullshit.

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I for one won't opt out because the only thing I get is spam and work shit. Go ahead train the AI off spam. The vast majority of emails are spam.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Does anyone have a good in depth guide on how to de-google? My ultimate goal is to not use Google at all and use Graphene OS on my Pixel

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR_ghQEN2SgB5ZpiIIzlJvtXhXHfEf1M7

TheHatedOne on YT has some good resources

You can also find degoogle lists with alternatives for each app, e.g. here: https://git.tycrek.com/archive/degoogle

My advice to you is to take one step at a time, explore at your own pace. It's easy to get overwhelmed, but IMO each step is beneficial on its own. E.g. instead of moving to Proton.me in one night (or any other email provider), first start by forwarding the emails and see if you're ok with the product

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] ryan_@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

So what you’re saying is that all of Epsteins emails are going to be used to train Gemini? Interesting…..

[–] JigglySackles@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Glad I never invested into gmail as an email platform. I have gmail only as part of my google accounts.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I already disabled all that "smart" crap years ago.

load more comments
view more: next ›