So Google is now preventing people from removing location data from photos taken with Pixel phones.
Remember when Google’s corporate motto was “don’t be evil?”
Obviously, accurate location data on photos is more useful to a data mining operation like Google.
From Google: “Important: You can only update or remove estimated locations. If the location of a photo or video was automatically added by your camera, you can’t edit or remove the location.”
It’s enshitification in action.
Source: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6153599?hl=en&sjid=8103501961576262529-AP
#technology #tech @technology #business #enshitification #Android #Google @pluralistic #infosec
@ajsadauskas @technology @pluralistic I ran into this a while back.
- It’s not new
- It’s not specific to Pixel photos.
The app and cloud service just don’t have support for modifying the EXIF tags, so if *any* camera has added GPS data, you can’t use Google Photos to change or remove it.
The estimated location is stored in the Google Photos database and can be modified within the app.
You *can* turn GPS off in the camera app.
@ajsadauskas @technology @pluralistic A few months ago I dug into ways to work around this with photos that had already been taken with the GPS coordinates. Annoyingly, you mostly have to save the photo, remove the tag, and re-upload it.
There is Scrambled Exif which i find quiet convenient for removing exif data quickly before sharing pictures.
@ajsadauskas @technology @pluralistic this isn’t necessarily addressing the issue/concern but I urge everyone to use an exif stripper before sharing a photo. Scrambled eggsif is doing that in a convenient way, share to the app and it will allow you to share to the destination of your choice (piping). https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jarsilio.android.scrambledeggsif
yess! and it’s FOSS and also available through F-Droid 🤩
I’m tired of this Google/Apple duopoly in the mobile computing space. We need a noncommercial option. I’ve been daily driving a Linux phone for almost 2 years now. Originally a PinePhone, then a PinePhone Pro, then a OnePlus 6T, now back to the PinePhone Pro. The ecosystem is still in its early days and a lot of things don’t work, but it’s so nice to have a phone that I control rather than a phone that controls me. Google used to be awesome, Android used to be awesome, but they’ve been getting progressively worse for a decade or more.
The ecosystem is such a problem with Linux phones. Google has 3.5 million apps on the Google Play Store, while Apple has a still impressive 1.5 million apps. You can replace some of the functionality with web applications, but you miss out on important features like push notifications. I can think of a couple of dozen Android apps where I would miss a significant amount of functionality, including making VPN access to my workplace significantly more difficult. Same with a bike GPS device and Fitbit watch. Both require an Android or iPhone to provide full functionality. Ideals are nice. Delivering functionality is nicer.
Well, PWAs have access to a lot of hardware APIs (if allowed) and there’s WebPush.
