Another problem is "resist fingerprinting" prevents some canvas processing, and many websites like bluesky, linked in or substack uses canvas to handle image upload, so your images appear to be stripes of pixel.
Then you have mobile apps that just don't run if you don't have a google account, like chatgpt's native app.
I understand why people give up, trying to fight for your privacy is an uphill battle with no end in sight.
Is that true? At least on iOS you can log into the ChatGPT with same email/password as the website.
I never use Google login for stuff and ChatGPT works fine for me.
That's not true, I use ChatGPT's app on my phone without logging into a Google account.
You don't even need any kind of account at all to use it.
An android phone asks you to link a google account when you use it for the first time. It takes a very dedicated user to refuse that, then to avoid logging in into the gmail, youtube or app store apps which will all also link your phone to your google account when you sign in.
But I do actively avoid this, I use Aurora, F-droid, K9 and NewPipeX, so no link to google.
But then no ChatGPT app. When I start it, I get hit with a logging page to the app store and it's game over.
In an adversarial environment, especially with both AI scrapers and AI posters, websites have to be able to identify and ban persistent abusers. Which unfortunately implies having some kind of identification of everybody.
In the end, the fact remain: no chatgpt app without giving up your privacy, to google none the less.
I haven't tried the ChatGPT app, but I know that, for example my bank and other financial services apps work with on-device fingerprint authentication and no Google account on /e/OS.
Of course as Google doesn't claim they do this, many people would consider it unreasonably fearful/cynical.
That's the opposite stance that would be bonkers.
I couldn't disagree more. The way to protect privacy is to make privacy the standard at the implementation layer, and to make it costly and difficult to breach it.
Trying to rely on political institutions without the practical and technical incentives favoring privacy will inevitably result in the political institutions themselves becoming the main instrument that erodes privacy.
If people who valued privacy really controlled the implementation layer we wouldn't have gotten to this point in the first place.
Yes? I mean, not "leaks" - it's designed to upload your private data to Google and others.
https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/study-reveals-scale-...
> Even when minimally configured and the handset is idle, with the notable exception of e/OS, these vendor-customised Android variants transmit substantial amounts of information to the OS developer and to third parties such as Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Facebook that have pre-installed system apps. There is no opt-out from this data collection.
Google and Apple are both heavily invested in ads (apple made 4.7 billion from ads in 2022), they have a track record of exfiltrating your data (remember contractors listening to your siri recordings?), of lying to the customers (remember the home button scandal on iPhone?), have control over a device that have your whole life yet runs partially on code you can't evaluate.
Trusting those people makes no sense at all. You have a business relationship with them, that's it.