You're not alone: This email from Google's Gemini team is concerning
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You might be thinking of the normal Google Assistant
Didn't Google replace the normal Google Assistant with Gemini on newer phones?
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Same. My only use is accidental.
Guess I'm should get around to disabling it.
I thought I had disabled it, and I don't have the app, but I can't see any way to remove it from any of the settings mentioned in the email
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Dear tech bros,
We, the people, don't want to use your AI shit. Please stop shoving it down our throats. Thank you.
Sincerely,
-The people
You don't want to use it.
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Dear tech bros,
We, the people, don't want to use your AI shit. Please stop shoving it down our throats. Thank you.
Sincerely,
-The people
yes but what if a company has the ability to create billions of close friends who can recommend sponsored products to you? why would it care about whether you want that or not?
also bard was a way better name for google's LLM. it has its origins in an isaac asimov story about a robot who is programmed to tell random stories.
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X is blocked on network level here, could you please copy&paste?
Same entire thread on Mastodon: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114670995130379882
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
Pls break Google up. Kthx
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I don't feel very concerned... That's kind of the point of the service.
Good that there's an opt-out.
edit: I dug around for it. They seem to mean the literal "Apps" settings page and not the "Settings" page. Every individual app that Gemini is capable of connecting to has a switch there. In Gemini, press your profile picture, then apps. In there you can both access the activity setting and decide which apps Gemini has access to.
Good that there’s an opt-out.
A supposed opt-out
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Didn't Google replace the normal Google Assistant with Gemini on newer phones?
At least on my pixel 7, they rolled out Gemini replacement but you could revert it to the classic assistant. It was slow, none of my normal commands worked, and it wouldn't find anything I was looking for just "answer my question". I asked it how to disable itself and it couldn't answer that though. You can probably find documentation online if you use an actual search engine
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X is blocked on network level here, could you please copy&paste?
Use Xcancel.
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Sailfish OS has it.
Unfortunately the project has some closed source bits which, imho, aren't an issue when you look closer (some parts of the UI). Maybe I'm naive but I trust this EU company.
I use it as my daily driver. It certainly is frugal compared to recent Android versions, but fully functional.
It's an actual Linux OS (as opposed to any Android version). Things work the same way they do on my laptop & server.
I used Maemo on my N900 <3.
I don't wanna use Sailfish bcs of the phone support tho, I'm shallow af & I need my hardware :(.
(I also have a few other Sailfish issues, the source code/availability/package, the licencing - but I feel like all of those could/would change with some growth.) -
Pls break Google up. Kthx
Let's not stop at Google. Break them all up!
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I used Maemo on my N900 <3.
I don't wanna use Sailfish bcs of the phone support tho, I'm shallow af & I need my hardware :(.
(I also have a few other Sailfish issues, the source code/availability/package, the licencing - but I feel like all of those could/would change with some growth.)I understand. But I think it's right that they concentrate on a few devices. There's also something about SONY openly providing firmware and encouraging unlocking, something "Open Devices" iirc.
Ah, the N900...
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I'm looking at a Volla phone https://volla.online/en/
But I also have no experience of Linux in general yet so I have no idea if this is a good move.
I just really want to get away from android/apple/windows on all of my devices.
I want SteamOS for desktop, because quite frankly gaming is all I really use a desktop for anymore.
I'm going to second a recommendation for Bazzite. If you've used normal Linux before, it takes some getting used to the quirks of an atomic distro, but I've been using it for a month or two and love it!
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Good that there’s an opt-out.
A supposed opt-out
Well, yeah. I haven't actually seen this email yet in my personal inbox,
nor have I found the opt out personally. Google is kinda weird with their staggered rollouts but I figure it'll turn up. I'm on a Pixel, so anything else would be quite odd.edit: seems to be in the top right corner of Gemini, press your profile picture and then apps. That's where the settings are. You can opt out of Gemini having access to any app in the list on an individual basis.
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
I agree it would be concerning if I allowed Gemini access to my phone. Fuck that. This shit is exactly why I am on GrapheneOS.
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Let's not stop at Google. Break them all up!
Seize the means of production
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You don't want to use it.
The companies keep preloading it on new tech, updating old tech so its there, preventing the option from disabling it from even being there, and disabling tech that can't use it.
This. Shit. Can. Fuck. All. The. Way. Off!
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is gemini on all androids? i remember there once was something called bixby, now when i accidentally hold the home button for too long it tells me to enable "circle". i've disabled all of those "smart" features but fuck knows what is going to get automatically installed in an update next week
Bixby is/was Samsung's assistant thing. Unrelated to Google's Gemini
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Dear tech bros,
We, the people, don't want to use your AI shit. Please stop shoving it down our throats. Thank you.
Sincerely,
-The people
Is it really the people or just a subset of people that use Lemmy, the vast majority of people seemingly don’t care as is evidenced by the sheer number of people using things like social media.
What might be important to use in this echo chamber isn’t reflective of society on the whole.
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Isn't Android using a Linux kernel already?
Yeah, but the kernel is a low-level module that handles hardware, memory, and processes—it’s not what users interact with directly, so sharing the same kernel doesn’t make it all that similar as you’d think.
What makes Linux feel like ‘Linux’ to users is the stuff on top: the userland—bash, coreutils, package managers, X11/Wayland, etc. Android replaces almost all of that, so even though it uses the Linux kernel, it doesn’t feel like Linux.
