Mastodawn

The Right Ride Way Jul 17, 2025

Lauren Weinstein

WARNING: #GOOGLE IS TRYING TO TRICK YOU INTO USING GEMINI AI AND FEEDING GEMINI YOUR DATA IN GMAIL AND OTHER APPS!

What Google is now doing should be ILLEGAL. PERIOD. For the first time I can recall in history of using Gmail, it just now popped a modal dialogue box -- DEMANDING that I choose whether or not I wanted "Smart Features" turned on -- which when you read the verbiage mostly means goddamned Gemini AI AND if you enable this you're giving Google permission to use your data to "improve" this horrifically invasive, inept, and misinformation spewing tech that steals data from websites for its own use without permission of those sites. DON'T LET IT SUCK IN YOUR EMAIL AS WELL!

There was no way I could find to exit the modal window without choosing YES or NO, which means my existing selection to NOT use Gmail Smart Features (long my preference) was NOT being honored. After saying NO to this disgusting query by Google, I was pushed to ANOTHER page where I was forced to choose again about "smart features" in "other" Google apps. I chose NO again and finally was permitted to escape this trap.

Note that while you can fairly easily check to make sure "smart features" are turned off in Gmail settings, I offhand don't have a clue as to how to find the similar settings in other Google apps that may have been affected by this absolutely disrespectful forced dialogue, as Google keeps trying to ram Gemini AI down our throats.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Google has become a DISGRACE.

#Google #Gmail #Gemini #AI

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

And remember, even if YOU have these invasive "smart features" turned off, if you communicate by Gmail with someone who has them turned on, your email will still be sucked into Gemini AI. Like I said, this should be ILLEGAL.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

I believe I've found the new Gemini-centric "smart features" controls in Gmail, that also seem to include the "other apps" setting as well. If you click the gear, then All Settings, then scroll WAY DOWN in the General tab, there's a "Manage Workspace smart feature settings" bubble. If you click that, you'll see a pair of settings that appear to represent your choices during the forced dialogue modal popup I discussed in the original post on this thread. I can't be 100% sure, but that's how it appears to me currently. My recommendation: Make sure they are both OFF!

Grifflion 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇬🇧 🇮🇪 🇪🇺Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Thanks for this 👍

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Why would you ever trust them to honor any of your settings though? As you said they already overrode them to get to this & also their #AI is stealing content everywhere else.

The only option is to get the everloving fuck out of the #Google ecosystem & then just hope they can't get to you in other ways, which they probably can but don't obey in advance. #Resistance is its own reward & also might actually work eventually. Not resisting definitely won't.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@jwcph My concern is with ordinary users who as a practical matter have to use these systems and do not have the technical background for workaround hacks. My goal is finding ways to convince -- or force through legislation -- firms like Google to do the right thing for their billions of users. Because the reality is most users ARE going to keep using these systems, because the time and confusion associated with switching is entirely out of scope for most. Most people can just barely use these systems and devices well enough to get crucial things done, making things harder for them by disrupting what they've finally learned is not a viable solution for the vast majority.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Well, that's true, but also not. Switching email, for example, is about as easy as getting a Gmail account in the first place - several services have "import from Gmail" as a default offering.

It just *feels* like it's a huge deal - like you're going to mess something up. You almost certainly won't but *you don't have to delete your Gmail to switch*! Leave it on for a bit while using your new email, until the dread feeling goes away.

People need to be told this, again & again.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jul 17, 2025

@lauren (I know you, personally know these things but a lot of people don't & they need to be told)

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@jwcph My overall view is that all of the major email platforms are moving in the same direction, and that hopping from one to another is ultimately futile. These issues need to be dealt with en masse across the provider space, and that means legislatively. Obviously the environment for that right now is awful, but it remains the only long term solution. Because unless these practices are banned, all of these firms will ultimately feel the competitive pressure to use them. I concentrate on Google because it is obviously very large, has about a third of global email, and I know it the best (both as a user and internally from the times I worked inside).

slash Jul 17, 2025

@lauren @jwcph Absolutely. I gave up being a Libertarian when I realized that some problems require regulation to be solved. This is one.

However, for the technically inclined, there's this:

https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/ryoms/

A recent book on how to run your own mail server (ryoms), which works you past all the usual deliverability hurdles. Again, not a solution for the general case, but easily within the reach of Unix users.

Run Your Own Mail Server

You Against the Email Empire Message services appear and disappear, but email remains. One of the Internet’s oldest and most open protocols, email reaches everywhere. Dominated by a handful of carriers, yet still manageable by the rest of us. If you do it right. Setting up the email server wit

Tilted Windmill Press

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@agreeable_landfall @jwcph Having run my own mail servers for decades -- and I still do -- I would NEVER, EVER recommend self-hosting to anyone starting off these days. It's an endless battle in terms of spam and other attacks, and that's assuming a nice clean open port 25 and PTR records without having to use workarounds to get past ISP restrictions on consumer level services which most people have. Even getting the major email services to accept your mail means all the SPF and DKIM and other hoops increasingly.

slash Jul 17, 2025

@lauren @jwcph Hence the book, which walks you through those things. Again, a solution for the technically-inclined.

Mark T. Tomczak Jul 17, 2025

@jwcph @lauren Authentication and online identity are too fundamentally tied to email to make this a practical suggestion for most users.

If I switch my email providers right now, I literally cannot pay my mortgage.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@mark @jwcph Exactly. I hear frequently from people cut off from various institutions because of failed email address changes, even when they tried keeping the old address around for a while. It's a terrible risk these days.

slash Jul 17, 2025

@lauren @mark @jwcph

Back in the day, I was on dial-up. And changing ISPs meant a new email address. I then discovered that domain registrars supplied "email forwarders"; buy a domain and get up to 300 addresses in that domain, forwarded to wherever you were. So I could now have a fixed email address, and a change of ISP was a simple matter of changing the forwarding destination.

At that time, a .us address was $5/year. This is still relatively cheap, and not that hard to set up.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@agreeable_landfall @mark @jwcph Except that .us addresses are widely blocked en masse as spam sources. And when those forwarders go out of business or otherwise get shut down you're cooked.

slash Jul 17, 2025

@lauren @mark @jwcph .US was simply what *I* chose. Pick .com or .ai if you prefer. Most people on the fedi aren't eligible for a .us domain anyway.

Since the "forwarder" is a domain registrar, simply pick one that's been in business for a long time. I hear DigiCert has a few years under its belt.

Cooked? You *own* that domain. Move your domain to a different registrar. If your registrar goes belly-up, choose again. Mail servers will retry delivery for days, so you won't lose mail.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@agreeable_landfall @mark @jwcph Point is most people don't register their own domains and the associated hassle. And never, ever, depend on retry counts. I know of major mail systems that will stop retrying after a single failure. Seriously.

Mark T. Tomczak Jul 17, 2025

@agreeable_landfall @lauren @jwcph Most people are not equipped to own a domain, especially if we're talking the Venn diagram of people who would be heavily disrupted if they changed their email address.

Worth remembering: most users are in the category "I write all my passwords in this notebook I keep in an easy-to-steal place on my desk."

(Actually, I take that back. most users are in the category "I use one password for everything; who is organized enough to keep track of more than one?").

slash Jul 17, 2025

@mark @lauren @jwcph I thought I had been pretty clear that my suggestions were NOT for 'most people'. If there was some confusion, I apologize.

You have to sign up with a registrar. Purchase a domain (prices vary by domain). Use their web interface to link "[email protected]" with "[email protected]". And....you're done. You now have a permanent email address, which will persist no matter where you move your real email service.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Jul 17, 2025

@mark @lauren It's definitely not something to do on a whim - but then people don't take a 2-week trip abroad on a whim either. It can however be planned & it isn't hard, just tedious. Like, start by taking some time making a list: Which IDs, logins etc. are tied to my email address? Do they have "Change email" features? How do they work? Etc.

It took me at least a year from deciding to change to doing it & going on a year later I still have a dormant Gmail address. It's OK if it takes a while.

My camera shoots fascists Jul 17, 2025

@lauren
One more reason to accelerate the de-Google-ification of my life.

But, FFS, every time you reply to someone with a Gmail address who hasn't turned this shit off, you're basically letting this creepy company ingest your email. And so damn many people use Gmail that it's pretty hard to say, "sorry, I can't respond to you until you switch to something else."

I fucking hate this.

Harald Wagener Jul 17, 2025

@lauren my 85 year old mother flat out stopped using Gmail until I was able to pay her a visit to sort out the dialog that doesn't even show you the scroll bar you need to use to scroll down to be able to deny the "smart features" activation, which has been a massive issue in Germany, re-translating emails from German to German and confusing and falsifying texts along the way ...

Ref

https://www.t-online.de/digital/aktuelles/id_100811852/gmail-fantasiert-googles-mail-programm-verfaelscht-fremde-inhalte.html

https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20250606/manche-fehler-machen-wir-tatsaechlich-nicht-selbst

"Making the world's information generally useful and accessible" has clearly turned into "Taking the world's information and generally munge it up"

Gmail fantasiert: Googles Mail-Programm verhunzt Inhalte

Ohne Vorwarnung verändert sich der Inhalt von E-Mails – und mitten in journalistischen Texten tauchen absurde Fehler auf: t-online deckt auf, dass Google ein Problem hat – und vielen Menschen damit Probleme macht.

t-online

Harald Wagener Jul 19, 2025

@lauren more fun: if you use multiple devices/browsers, you get prompted on every device/browser.

@iveyline Jul 17, 2025

@lauren It should be illegal. It is the theft of personal IP.

BSM (sw.s) 🇨🇭Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Google has been reading your emails for as long as Gmail has existed (and used it to train their AI), and now that they're introducing Gemini, you're complaining?! The mistake began when you first started using Gmail.

There is only one way to solve this: Leave Google/Gmail behind!

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@bsm You are conflating different systems. Unless you've worked inside Google, as I have, you may not have as precise an understanding of these systems as I do. There is a BIG difference between the systems that have traditionally scanned Gmail for malware, spam, and (until it stopped serving context targeted ads), targeted ad placements -- vis-a-vis a general purpose LLM like Gemini operating across a range of products. At least according to my current information, Gemini has not been trained on Gmail except as disclosed to various classes of Gmail users (e.g. enterprise -- and that is indeed a controversial situation relating to defaults). But the push of this into the consumer Gmail side now is a major escalation because most users do not understand the implications.

Flo Jul 17, 2025

@lauren @bsm the implications aren’t that different, we had exactly the same invasion of privacy debate in 2004 when they served ads based on the content of your email. Either you trust Google to honor their terms of service, or you don’t.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@faz @bsm I've never seen evidence (either externally or when I had the opportunity internally) that Google knowingly violates their ToS. There has always been a great deal of public hyperbole regarding Google that did not conform to reality -- especially regarding ads. However, what we're seeing now falls more into the category of "dark patterns" which do not necessarily violate the ToS but are unethical nonetheless.

SpaceLifeForm Jul 17, 2025

I have not used email in two years. Whatever they can see is not from me, and is likely spam, which I hope they choke on.

Matteo Pinzauti Jul 17, 2025

@lauren some weeks ago I started a new Google account, and I read all the permissions it asks just the first time when you configure it.
The first one is if it can use all the chrome chronology to "improve". @EUCommission please make rules on the privacy of our data.

Fluffgar 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Tutamail is a pretty good alternative. They have a calendar too. @Tutanota

Long list of alternatives to various apps here: https://european-alternatives.eu/

European Alternatives

We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.

European Alternatives

Tuta Jul 17, 2025

@fluffgar @lauren Thanks for recommending Tuta :) If you have any questions, let us know!

Coyote of Winter Jul 17, 2025

@fluffgar @lauren @Tutanota Good to know, thanks!

soc Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Don't use Google? 🤷

Toni Aittoniemi Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Yeah well. They lied about AGI and they know it, so they can’t walk back on it and to keep faking it they have to steal all of the data all the time. 🙄

qurlyjoe Jul 17, 2025

@lauren
I access my google mail account from Apple mail on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone. I haven’t seen anything about Gemini in those apps. I had to login to the account with Safari on the Mac yesterday to change the password but didn’t get the dialogue you mention. No idea what protection, if any, that affords me with this.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@qurlyjoe Probably none. These things tend to roll out gradually to the user base, it probably just hasn't hit you yet.

qurlyjoe Jul 17, 2025

@lauren
I suppose I should be asking Apple about this.

Bill Of Earth42 Jul 17, 2025

@lauren Yep, so much for "Don't be evil." Since that dialog, I have been considering Proton mail.

Lauren Weinstein Jul 17, 2025

@billOfEarth42 Proton is also going into AI. No escape there in the long run.

sonicJazzMonkey Jul 17, 2025

@lauren
Yep time to move to another email provider. #protonmail #gmxmail

drs1969 (David Smith) 🇬🇧Jul 17, 2025

@lauren UK folks - this has been turned on for us as well. I assume it hasn't in the EU, but... it was on as a default for me and I didnt agree to any off it that I know of.

@leX 🤘🏻Jul 17, 2025

@lauren
It's enshittification at its finest.

But: you get what you pay for...

I ditched Gmail 12 years ago and still am able to send mails, now respecting privacy. At least on my side...