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This is going to sound corny but those "X years ago on this date" features of Amazon Photos and Google Photos are a great trip down memory lane for me. Even cor

• ggm 5y ago
  I totally hate them. I have very beautiful photos of funerals. I have very beautiful photos of places I was mugged. I have bad memories which are initiated by good photographs. There is a huge assumption that a memory is something positive because a photo looks nice. I would really like this to be significantly more overtly optional. I would have preferred the investment in time to make 'do a panorama from these images' instead of an AI which makes a panorama IF IT FEELS LIKE IT but I cannot command.
  • s0rce 5y ago
    I never really thought about it too much but your post made me think. I also have photos of bad/negative memories but I think overall I really enjoying seeing the photos from the happy times and the photos from the bad remind me of things or make me think and don't tend to ruin my day. Overall, I like the feature but I totally see where you are coming from and its not great the AI just sends you these memories basically randomly, not sure how to do this without curation (still prone to error or magic all knowing AI (more scary really).
    • Yhippa 5y ago
      I've had the same thing happen too. I will say that I have taken some final pictures of my pets at the vet before they passed away. I did take the pictures for a reason at the time. When those pictures come up it is sad, but in a perverse way, it helps me viscerally remember my beloved pets. This is all a part of life and what made their existence with me special.
  • Baeocystin 5y ago
    Last week Google's AI thought it would be fun to create a silly photo reel of my dogs capering about. It then happily mixed in photos of them dying at the veterinary office, all set to whimsical music. I hate this pseudo-cutesy zero-context crap so very, very much.
    • squeegmeister 5y ago
      Oh my god, lol. I'm sorry
    • klabb3 5y ago
      Yeah, I feel you. As soon as these features started to get traction, I knew this would happen. Certainly some people have had much worse experiences than you. Mental issues can also intensify reactions to memories. The worst part is that it's unsolicited. At least have the courtesy to ask.
      • stickfigure 5y ago
        It's a given that the algorithm will not understand how each individual picture will affect you. Even a real not-you human would struggle. You're either "in" for the whole memory-lane ride, or not at all. There's no wrong answer; for some people the past is more painful than joyous. Personally, I'll take the occasional jarring bad to get the bountiful reminders of the good. Or maybe it's just my personality to take more pictures of happy things.
        • klabb3 5y ago
          So.. I just checked and both Google and Apple Photos do NOT allow you to disable memories. Everything is on by default, but you can disable notifications, specific dates and faces, but you can't disable it altogether. If most people like it, fine to leave it on by default I guess - the growth team has to get promoted some way. But at least let me disable it.
          • arethuza 5y ago
  • greggman3 5y ago
    I'm 100% with you here. I hate Apple, Google, Facebook trying to surface memories for me. I'm happy to look at the pictures on my own via their services but I really want those recommendations and "You 1 year ago" and stuff like that off for myself.
  • oceanghost 5y ago
    This exactly. My honeymoon photos (divorced now), photos of friends to whom I no longer speak, regardless of the circumstances... photos of pets that died, ex girlfriends who you were sure was the one... all just add a pang of sadness to my day. Forgetting things is mercy. My best friend died about 10 years ago. She still has a facebook account because when you die suddenly you don't get to settle your affairs. At least a few times a year I'm reminded of my memories of her, or its her birthday. Or even just seeing how stupid I was and the dumb things I posted, is a bit painful :-) "No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget. The things you're most afraid of have already happened. The shutter is clicked. The flash goes off and they've stopped time, as if just for the blink of an eye." - Sy Parish One Hour Photo (2002)
  • jraph 5y ago
    To anyone in this thread not liking these features, for good reasons, and are unable to avoid them. I sympathize. Now, have it your way, take back the control by using your computer with software you can control. You are currently playing in someone else's garden, by their rules. That might have been enjoyable for a while, now just leave, your not at home. Never my dumb photo viewer and my dumb file manager hurt me / tried to outsmart me with this kind of unwarranted behaviors. Just take an external storage drive, put your photos in there, ensure you make backups and done. Don't let someone else / big corporations with motives not aligned with yours control you. Control your life! And your relatives will also thank you for the increased privacy for them. It might be a bit less convenient but the peace of mind you gain is invaluable. These "someone else's computer" sentences are very concrete.
    • nonameiguess 5y ago
      This was a very minor reason in the grand order of reasons, but it played into why I finally left Facebook a few years ago. It's not like I was using it as a photo manager. I'd only uploaded six photos ever and had been a member since 2004. But as I was sitting in the hospital recovering from my third spine surgery in 16 months, unable to even walk, and they throw me a photo on my timeline "hey, remember just 5 years ago when you could summit a mountain?" Yeah, I remember. It felt like they were kicking me in the face exactly after I'd already fallen down. I did turn the feature off once they let you, but it doesn't do a user much good to throw new features like that in their face and then let them opt out after you've already insulted them.
      • codeflo 5y ago
        My story is less interesting, but I also remember quitting Facebook when it started to taunt me with photos of a past relationship that I wasn’t completely over yet at the time. Stuff like that has to be common. Did the “growth hacking” cynics who design these features not realize the harm they cause, or is the generated “engagement” still worth it in aggregate despite a few lost users?
    • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      You can also... Disable these features in Google Photos. Why are you being so dramatic over one feature in a photo app? I love automatic backups, being able to view on my phone or computers, being able to search by person/location/thing
  • technothrasher 5y ago
    I always hated the Facebook "On this date" stuff in my feed. If I want to look back, I'm perfectly capable of doing that by myself. Once the announced they would allow you to set sensitive dates so it wouldn't remind you of the day you lost a loved one or similar, I just told it every date from 1/1/1900 to now was sensitive and bingo, no more "feature". Of course, I've now found a more effective solution, which is to stop using Facebook.
  • teekert 5y ago
    Yeah I agree, to a degree, I really like the "for you" section in the iPhone Photos app. It makes that stuff offline on the phone (I don't use iCloud), I like that. Often is reminds me of nice times and makes me feel good. But there is indeed that one photo where the kids were about to have a big argument and I got (too) angry and that photo is in 5/10 movies the phone makes, there is no option to say "ignore that photo" and I don't want to delete it. It's a big bummer. A bit more control would be nice.
• rexf 5y ago
  Yeah, these X years ago photo memories are cool. When I use my DSLR, I try to take a lot of photos with the intention of picking a few good ones later. These sit in storage and I usually don't see them again. As you said, it's a "zillion photos" of subject X. When I use my phone, I generally try to take a photo here and there. But I don't need to take as many photos (vs DSLR mode). What is a slog is when I try to take a "zillion photos" of something with my phone. It really adds noise pollution to my phone's photo album. Also, I don't like having a bunch of iPhone Burst mode photos. It really takes makes looking through my photos cumbersome and picking the "best" one to keep is a chore that nobody wants to do.
  • klabb3 5y ago
    I've looong wished for this simple feature: just group similar photos automatically. Barely requires AI. A simple clustering by time and histogram would probably have an acceptable error rate. Finding the best one though is a harder problem, even for a human.
    • gsinclair 5y ago
      But it’s amazing that phones and computers don’t have built-in software that _helps_ to find the best one.
      • Nextgrid 5y ago
        Helping you find the best one quickly means you spend less time “engaging” with the product/service. Not in the developer’s best interest at all.
• eschneider 5y ago
  For us older folks, that feature is “dead people of the day” and honestly, I could do without it.
• Derbasti 5y ago
  > I don't think I've ever thought "boy, I sure wish I took less photos back then". I have thought the opposite. I have come to realize that the vacation itself is only part of the fun. Reminiscing about the vacation afterwards, and reliving those emotions, in the long run might be more relevant to my life than the trip itself. Photographs help me capture a moment to remember it by. They also often portrait an idealized version of the event, perhaps highlighting the beautiful, and disregarding the troublesome. And frankly, that is as it should be. > There is one exception. Whenever I fancied myself a photographer and took a zillion photos of motorsport races are a slog to get through. For me, the solution is editing. Quite often I only "keep" a small handful of pictures of dozens or hundreds I took. ("keep" in quotes, as I backup everything. One time a relative died and one of my discarded pictures was the last one taken of them. I was glad I hadn't deleted that "bad" shot.) And secondly, I keep a private blog and yearly photo books with the most memorable pictures, which acts as a second level of editing. It is a lot of work, actually, but we don't have any books we hold more dearly. And our friends and relatives love them, too. Google and Facebook and Amazon, however, do not need to see my pictures, thank you very much.
  • coldtea 5y ago
    >I have come to realize that the vacation itself is only part of the fun. Reminiscing about the vacation afterwards, and reliving those emotions, in the long run might be more relevant to my life than the trip itself Provided that there has been a vacation, and experienced in its time too. Because for many it's experienced as a hurried rush from one "mandatory" place to visit to another, and endless picture taking, posting, and not living in the moment.
    • Derbasti 5y ago
      It's true. There is a balance to be struck between living the moment, and capturing it. The former is much more important in my book. After all, the purpose of a vacation is to get rest, and experience new things. It might also be worth noting that there are different kinds of photography. On vacation, I mostly practice "documentary" photography, that happens in the moment, without disrupting things. For me, photography is also a way to enhance my appreciation of a moment. It forces me to be present and reactive, in a way I tend not to be otherwise. But I recon that this might be very different for other people.