Google Removes ‘Pirate’ URLs from Users’ Privately Saved Links::undefined
Man, they really want you to use Firefox
I can’t imagine depending on Google to store anything. They shouldn’t be able to even see what links you save.
Yeah, this is incredibly intrusive
As someone who just converted from Chrome to Firefox 1-2 months ago: what alternative can you recommend to Google Drive? I wouldn’t miss everything from it, but being able to easily share data (so that they can play videos, audio files or documents without having to manually download them) is one of them.
EDIT: and maybe Google Photos. Mainly for syncing.
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Thanks for the idea. I’m mainly looking for storage that I could access even if I blow up my house.
This.
I invested in my personal infrastructure a bit. Bought an old retired Dell R710 server for $100, installed proxmox on it. Nextcloud is basically a one-click install using a Turnkey Linux container.
My setup clearly isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve got $100 to spare for some hardware and aren’t afraid of running your own server, proxmox is free and crazy powerful.
For storage, for free options I’d recommend filen.io, which gives you 10GB free. If you’re open to other paid options, proton drive and infomaniak drive seem alright.
Just skimming the alternativeto entries for google photos, the open source alternatives to Google photos look like they tend to be either paid or self hosted. Stingle Photos has a free 1GB tier you could try out. Otherwise, paid options include Stingle, ente, and seafile, and self hosted options include immich and Nextcloud (which is also a drive alternative).
Wow, thanks for the detailed answer! I wouldn’t mind a paid service as long as it’s not significantly more expensive than what Google can offer. However, I’m a bit more conscious regarding data security. I checked on mega.io and I’ve read mixed opinions.
Depends on how much effort you want to put into it. Nextcloud is the closest in terms of features but you’ll need to set it up.
I have a ProtonDrive account and I like it but it doesn’t have auto upload of photos. You need to manually upload them. I’m personally fine with this since 90% of my photos are receipts and junk.
Mega.io created by Kim Dotcom is (mostly) open source.
I wouldn’t trust anything involving fucking Kim Dotcom lmao
I’ve read some concerning stuff about him. The usual counterargument was that the source code was still open/public, but I can imagine he could still do nasty stuff to the plain data if he wanted to.
Proton drive gives a lot less storage for free but is known to be more secure and private
Thanks, I will take a look.
Protonmail has smaller cloud storage, but you have to pay for it. A thumb drive will work.
D I T C H
C H R O M E
And stop using chromium browsers too!
No point in ditching chrome just to use chrome with a different coat of paint.
Yep! A few months ago I moved from Brave to Firefox since Brave can’t be trusted
I’m pretty sure the other browsers have to comply too
And yet, I can still google torrent sites
Google search really has gone downhill. I’m using fence on my phone and it defaults to duckduckgo. Gotta say, it’s just as good, occasionally a little better.
Don’t rely on online service to save your stuff.
Edit: how can i exclude < and > from being interpreted?
Usually a backslash (the one under the backspace key, not the one that shares a key with ”?") before a character that would usually be treated as a formatting instruction will stop it from being interpreted as such. Could be different for other machine-interpreted languages but when used this way, the backslash is called an “escape character”.
The \ key. And you might ask how I wrote that symbol without it gettting interpreted. Well, by writing \\.
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It’s a forward slash, to be clear. There’s not two backslashes on the keyboard.
I specified the location of the backslash as a way to tell the difference between that and the forward slash. Probably could have made my intent more clear if I’d stated that the slash sharing a key with the question mark was the forward one as you mention but didn’t see a need.
Imagine being downvoted because someone else can’t figure out the difference between a forward and back slash.
Lemmings, weird breed. Lots of chuds, it seems.
What excuse are they using if it turns out that the takedown request was false?
Would they undelete the private user’s lists?
Would they reimburse anybody for the damage?
Maybe it will make people see Google for what they are. So many are stuck in some kind of illusion.
They did a lot of good for the FOSS community for many years. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
“You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain” — Harvey Dent
They’re an advertising company that tries to collect information about targets through products those targets use. That’s it
I signed up for a Google Ads account for a non-profit I volunteer with. I had to verify the organization with governing documents, okay, fair enough. They also “require” my drivers license or passport. Excuse me? We will no longer have a Google Ads account after Sept 15 (the cut off to verify my identity).
I think because the moment you admit to yourself that Google is not so good a company, you are forced to recognize most are not and that is too much for many to swallow.
I don’t use this (Google Saved?) and I’m unfamiliar with it, is it similar to Pocket?
Is it this: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9217379
They’re literally going through people’s bookmarks if they’re using Chrome and signed into Google.
it’s not synced bookmarks, collections are a confusingly similar service
it also removed all of my saved places from google maps. thanks i like it
I don’t think that’s related
They had the pirate chests locations.
it isn’t but nobody is going to post a news article about it so I’m just fucked
This feels like a corporation complying with their obligations under the DMCA.
To maintain their safe harbor status, companies have to remove allegedly infringing content in response to a properly filed takedown notice. This does include links stored in google’s search results. This is what a company like google has to do when storing user data on servers in any country that signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
They don’t seem to be doing this in a malicious way. They have done their duty and removed the offending links from their service. But they quite kindly chose to notify the user by email, including the exact URL that was removed. The user can store that link elsewhere.
It would have been far easier to remove the link silently.
They shouldnt be reading and playing with things privately stored. Are they going to go through all my documents to replace any swear words? It’s completely inexcusable. Private doesn’t mean private until some big company asks about it wtf.
It’s not on bookmarks. Is on collections(a different thing) that are public, shareable and technically hosted by Google. This whole thing has been overblown by not fact checking.
See, this is why I like reading comments. Cooler heads prevail. Thank you for the context.
kinda makes sense. it’s like if a youtube video or soundcloud track gets DCMA’d then they’re going to remove the link.
if it was you actual browser bookmark i would understand the outrage.
im still on FF tho
This is from the “saved” bookmarks in the Google app.
This is not referring to actually removing a video from YouTube. If it was, removing the link from the “saved links” would be unnecessary because the video wouldn’t be there anymore anyway.
I skimmed through the article and didn’t see it mentioned, but in another post I read that this was only done for a shared collection, as in it was at least semi public if not public
Isn’t removing the bookmarks from people’s browser what they’re mad about? Now that Google is selling content through YouTube TV, I’ll bet they crack down hard on piracy. The old reddit /r/NFLstreams moved to a site a lot of people know. Now that Google owns Sunday ticket, I will not be surprised if it gets DDoS’d to shit this year and becomes borderline unusable. We’ll find out next week I guess.
It’s not from the browser. As stated in the article:
Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google’s synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that’s not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google’s saved feature.
It’s a feature specific to the google app that lets you share collections of bookmarks:
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/13128452?hl=en
They don’t want people sharing links to pirate sites.
It’s still bad, but saying they are going through bookmarks in chrome and deleting them is misinformation.
Just yesterday I saw a post that they did in fact remove bookmark and notified user about it with detail
A users bookmarks on the browser, and a collection saved on google, are different things. One is private, the other can be shared.
Oh boy, I’m feeling ultra smug now. Been using a Keepass database synced via Syncthing for about 3 years now
Assholes.
I’m gonna give Mullvad a shot, sick of Google’s shit.
What’s wrong with Firefox?
Firefox is usable with some tweaks and not that evil, even though sponsored by Google. But many people feel that they can’t believe Firefox like 10 years ago.
Some users feel it’s so wrong that they have forked the project: LibreWolf, which seems a good option too.
Mullvad browser is just a copy of Firefox that’s designed to work with their VPN.
Not entirely true. The mullvad browser adds a lot of anti-tracking stuff, which was originally implemented in the TOR Browser. So you’re definitely safer using the mullvad browser instead of plain Firefox
