7 ms·

Only tangentially related but I just checked the Google Photos iOS app to see if any of mine are corrupted, and it won't even allow me to view my cloud photos w

Only tangentially related but I just checked the Google Photos iOS app to see if any of mine are corrupted, and it won't even allow me to view my cloud photos without giving it full permission to all current photos on my device?! Isn't this against the app store policy? You can't deny me access to one feature just because I refuse to grant permissions to a different feature. But because it's Google I'm sure they can break whatever rules they want as long as it doesn't involve trying to avoid Apple's 30% fees.

sixothree 4y ago
And it will spend its spare time analyzing every single photo in your library.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Google doesn't scan photos that don't exist on their servers.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    ... currently. Trusting a dubious central authority up until you get burned is a bad heuristic.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      I agree, which is why I don't pay for cloud storage.
    - b112 4y ago
      Especially when Google has said "we won't do thing X", then been caught already doing it, or just silently starting to do it. Just location tracking. The lies. Over, and over, and over, and over again the lies.
      - maxbond 4y ago
        Institutions of that nature are incapable of following through on nearly any promise made to the public at large; every promise is a lie, whether they break it or not, because they can't be said to have the intention to uphold it. I see no reason not to believe that Page and Brin sincerely desired Google not to be evil; but it's the institution decides to do evil, not any individual, so they did not have (or could not maintain, as the organization scaled) the power to guarantee this. No one does.
    - sgregnt 4y ago
      What's the difference? Potentially apple itself can fecide to scan all your photos on the phone....
      - soulofmischief 4y ago
        I don't use an iPhone, and I use an aftermarket Android ROM.
  - junon 4y ago
    Fun fact, Xiaomi does by default on their stock OS.
    - coffeeblack 4y ago
      Who would allow the CCP to scan their device?
      - midislack 4y ago
        What difference does it make anyway at this point? Everybody does it.
      - junon 4y ago
        There wasn't anything to deny. There's no way to opt out.
  - pmlnr 4y ago
    How do you know? With full access, it's basically impossible to tell.
  - balaji1 4y ago
    > water stain with massive discoloration Maybe they store physical photos and the albums got soaked in water. Sadly it happened to all our 90s photo albums during a flood. Some of the photos were stained really bad.
  - choppaface 4y ago
    Which is why it’s obnoxious to ask permissions for all photos.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    It immediately presented me with a screen with the choice to "save originals to cloud or save a compressed version to the cloud" (I don't recall the exact words) with no option to not upload to the cloud, and then immediately started uploading my library. I scrolled back and checked some pre-2015 photos, they look fine, and then deleted the app.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    A typical feature of these cloud drives is automatic uploading of pictures from the camera roll, that’s the legitimate use case for demanding access to all pictures. Who knows when Google whoops! accidentally makes that the default. You know, it’s optional, you can just turn it off!
  - sixothree 4y ago
    I'm not sure I believe this _at all_. I uploaded a photo to google maps. A week later it found some random picture of a local park and offered up a notification suggesting that I upload this photo to the destination it had located in the maps app. How on earth are they doing this without "scanning" the photo? Seriously, please tell me.
choppaface 4y ago
This is an engagement hack. Get the user to give max permissions at the start so that any future call to action will have less friction and/or not require a modal. It’s less about Google wanting to scan your data today and more about Google’s stingy strategy for photos plus Google’s lazy engineering (too many other interesting games to solve). Google Photos was born out of Google Plus, and is under heavy revenue efficiency pressure.
Macuyiko 4y ago
Each passing month I am more and more convinced that I should urgently get a) my mails out of my personal (non paying) Gmail account and b) get my associated photos out of Google Photos, mainly because of baby pictures which I cannot fathom to lose. But then I think about the convenience of my 2TB Google Drive and I can't do it. And I think, too, of the Polaroid pictures my parents took and gave me in a box once I got married and are now fainted. Mayhaps algorithms deciding that it's time to let go of your own data is just the modern form of yellowing.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  Mirror them to a external 2TB hard drive?
- metters 4y ago
  > I should urgently get a) my mails out of my personal (non paying) Gmail account and b) get my associated photos out of Google Photos, mainly because of baby pictures which I cannot fathom to lose. I highly recommend it. It feels like pure freedom, putting a price tag on my personal data. The migration is something done in two steps: set up your alternative service, but also keep the old one (gmail/gdrive/calendar/...) running. Then start to use the new email service, while keeping the old one. There are enough affordable options and you do not have to migrate everything at once. I started with my emails - gmail is still running and forwards all incoming emails, so I wont miss anything. I already updated all my accounts/logins to the new email address. The next step was copying all my files from Dropbox, GDrive, and so on to {service I am using}. The data in the other clouds are still there, but I am going to delete it all soon. There are things that are not perfect - like accepting appointments, which I still want to show up in my Google calendar. To those mails I still have to respond in google mail. But I am getting there, one step after another. The win so far is much bigger than the loss/pain.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  I take periodic backups of my Google data using Takeout, primarily for the GMail backup. When I took one a few months ago, I noticed that the Drive part of the backup had some mangled filenames that the backup from a year ago didn't have. I don't remember exactly what it was but it was something like long-filename.pdf got truncated to long-file~01.pdf, like back in the 8.3 DOS days. Luckily I already have a local copy of the Drive contents so I didn't need to rely on it, but anyone else should be worried.
eek2121 4y ago
Yes, I ran into this issue after I switched to iOS a couple years ago. Google demanded full permissions to even open the app. I promptly downloaded my image library on the web, and also, related to OP's post, some of my images had artifacts. Some were even corrupt. I moved everything over to onedrive, and restored the corrupted ones that I had local copies of (gradually, it took a lot of work) with local copies I have. I now mirror in "the cloud" with both iCloud and OneDrive. I also have a local copy and a couple of USB sticks with a backup handy on my keychain (solely for if a fire breaks out and I remember to grab my keys).

sixothree 4y ago

And it will spend its spare time analyzing every single photo in your library.

smoldesu 4y ago
Google doesn't scan photos that don't exist on their servers.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  ... currently. Trusting a dubious central authority up until you get burned is a bad heuristic.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I agree, which is why I don't pay for cloud storage.
  - b112 4y ago
    Especially when Google has said "we won't do thing X", then been caught already doing it, or just silently starting to do it. Just location tracking. The lies. Over, and over, and over, and over again the lies.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Institutions of that nature are incapable of following through on nearly any promise made to the public at large; every promise is a lie, whether they break it or not, because they can't be said to have the intention to uphold it. I see no reason not to believe that Page and Brin sincerely desired Google not to be evil; but it's the institution decides to do evil, not any individual, so they did not have (or could not maintain, as the organization scaled) the power to guarantee this. No one does.
  - sgregnt 4y ago
    What's the difference? Potentially apple itself can fecide to scan all your photos on the phone....
    - soulofmischief 4y ago
      I don't use an iPhone, and I use an aftermarket Android ROM.
- junon 4y ago
  Fun fact, Xiaomi does by default on their stock OS.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    Who would allow the CCP to scan their device?
    - midislack 4y ago
      What difference does it make anyway at this point? Everybody does it.
    - junon 4y ago
      There wasn't anything to deny. There's no way to opt out.
- pmlnr 4y ago
  How do you know? With full access, it's basically impossible to tell.
- balaji1 4y ago
  > water stain with massive discoloration Maybe they store physical photos and the albums got soaked in water. Sadly it happened to all our 90s photo albums during a flood. Some of the photos were stained really bad.
- choppaface 4y ago
  Which is why it’s obnoxious to ask permissions for all photos.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  It immediately presented me with a screen with the choice to "save originals to cloud or save a compressed version to the cloud" (I don't recall the exact words) with no option to not upload to the cloud, and then immediately started uploading my library. I scrolled back and checked some pre-2015 photos, they look fine, and then deleted the app.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  A typical feature of these cloud drives is automatic uploading of pictures from the camera roll, that’s the legitimate use case for demanding access to all pictures. Who knows when Google whoops! accidentally makes that the default. You know, it’s optional, you can just turn it off!
- sixothree 4y ago
  I'm not sure I believe this _at all_. I uploaded a photo to google maps. A week later it found some random picture of a local park and offered up a notification suggesting that I upload this photo to the destination it had located in the maps app. How on earth are they doing this without "scanning" the photo? Seriously, please tell me.

choppaface 4y ago

This is an engagement hack. Get the user to give max permissions at the start so that any future call to action will have less friction and/or not require a modal. It’s less about Google wanting to scan your data today and more about Google’s stingy strategy for photos plus Google’s lazy engineering (too many other interesting games to solve). Google Photos was born out of Google Plus, and is under heavy revenue efficiency pressure.

Macuyiko 4y ago

Each passing month I am more and more convinced that I should urgently get a) my mails out of my personal (non paying) Gmail account and b) get my associated photos out of Google Photos, mainly because of baby pictures which I cannot fathom to lose. But then I think about the convenience of my 2TB Google Drive and I can't do it. And I think, too, of the Polaroid pictures my parents took and gave me in a box once I got married and are now fainted. Mayhaps algorithms deciding that it's time to let go of your own data is just the modern form of yellowing.

pdntspa 4y ago
Mirror them to a external 2TB hard drive?
metters 4y ago
> I should urgently get a) my mails out of my personal (non paying) Gmail account and b) get my associated photos out of Google Photos, mainly because of baby pictures which I cannot fathom to lose. I highly recommend it. It feels like pure freedom, putting a price tag on my personal data. The migration is something done in two steps: set up your alternative service, but also keep the old one (gmail/gdrive/calendar/...) running. Then start to use the new email service, while keeping the old one. There are enough affordable options and you do not have to migrate everything at once. I started with my emails - gmail is still running and forwards all incoming emails, so I wont miss anything. I already updated all my accounts/logins to the new email address. The next step was copying all my files from Dropbox, GDrive, and so on to {service I am using}. The data in the other clouds are still there, but I am going to delete it all soon. There are things that are not perfect - like accepting appointments, which I still want to show up in my Google calendar. To those mails I still have to respond in google mail. But I am getting there, one step after another. The win so far is much bigger than the loss/pain.
Arnavion 4y ago
I take periodic backups of my Google data using Takeout, primarily for the GMail backup. When I took one a few months ago, I noticed that the Drive part of the backup had some mangled filenames that the backup from a year ago didn't have. I don't remember exactly what it was but it was something like long-filename.pdf got truncated to long-file~01.pdf, like back in the 8.3 DOS days. Luckily I already have a local copy of the Drive contents so I didn't need to rely on it, but anyone else should be worried.

eek2121 4y ago

Yes, I ran into this issue after I switched to iOS a couple years ago. Google demanded full permissions to even open the app. I promptly downloaded my image library on the web, and also, related to OP's post, some of my images had artifacts. Some were even corrupt. I moved everything over to onedrive, and restored the corrupted ones that I had local copies of (gradually, it took a lot of work) with local copies I have. I now mirror in "the cloud" with both iCloud and OneDrive. I also have a local copy and a couple of USB sticks with a backup handy on my keychain (solely for if a fire breaks out and I remember to grab my keys).