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Google Photos makes it consistently *really* hard to tell if they're uploading things behind your back or not. For example, creating an album uploads all the photos, which came as a surprise to me the first time I made one.

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Replying to @mcclure111

Oh incidentally: Here's EXACTLY what happened. *Click "add photo to new album"* *It says, "Uploading"* *I say, "Cancel"* *IT UPLOADS ANYWAY*

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What about Lens? It's impossible to tell. If you look in settings, there's no off switch, but it says activity is saved "if you have Web and App Activity" turned on. What is that? It's not on this screen. There is a "Learn More" link which says absolutely nothing relevant.

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This is *really* concerning to me because it's literally impossible to *not* use Google Lens. If I don't like the album feature—fine, I won't create albums. But Lens is a large button in a place you're likely to hit it by accident often. I discovered it by accidentally tapping it

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If I look in my Google Activity, I find many cryptic entries under "Searched with Google Lens" — seemingly one for every time I pressed the button today, *as well as one for yesterday, when I hadn't realized I'd pressed it*. But *what* was uploaded? It doesn't say. No way to ask.

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Google seems to think the important question is what data is *retained*. They have elaborate written policies about what is done with retained data & detailed logs of retained data. Google considers information *transmitted*, but not retained, unimportant. I disagree completely.

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You should try a decent gallery app instead of the offline parts of the Google Photos client. This is fine: f-droid.org/en/packages/co The photo editor in the open source variant of it is extremely barebones though. Paid variant on the Play Store uses a fancy proprietary library.

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Is the organization "Simple Mobile Tools" on the Play store the same one that created this F Droid thing?

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F-Droid is an alternative to the Play Store with their own repository of open source apps. Simple Gallery Pro is open source but the Play Store variant is a paid app replacing the open source editor for a proprietary one. It's actually a GPL violation but they don't understand.

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Thanks for explaining. I usually stick to play store apps because I want the auto update behavior.

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F-Droid notifies of you of updates but can't install them without you. Android 12 is improving this and it will be possible for apps to automatically update apps they've installed themselves as long as those apps are API 29+. Usual key pinning + downgrade protection applies.

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i.e. if you actually install F-Droid as an app and install this app through it, will keep it updated by notifying you of updates and requiring that you press install + accept the OS dialog.

11:19 PM · Jul 29, 2021Twitter Web App