But surely there's a way to do this without totally killing valuable functionality? It's like the Android Sideloading debate all over again.

Something that is very useful to 1% of users is stripped away. And we end up with dumb appliances (and ironically - most likely still no privacy )

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jeroenhd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can probably get around this problem by compressing the file and uploading it in a .zip. Google Files allows for making zip files at least, so I don't think it's a rare feature.

I think the linked spec suggestion makes the most sense: make the feature opt-in in the file picker, probably require the user to grant location permissions when uploading files with EXIF location information.

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sixhobbits 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yeah it does sound kind of dodge that there's no option even for advanced users to bypass this, I would guess mainly a moat to protect Google Photos. I wonder if online photo competitors are finding a workaround or not as searching your photos by location seems like a big feature there

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jeroenhd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know when Google's EXIF protections are supposed to kick in, but so far my photos auto-synced to Nextcloud still contain location information as expected.

I don't think this has anything to do with Google Photos. People fall victim to doxxing or stalking or even location history tracking by third party apps all the time because they don't realize their pictures contain location information. It's extra confusion to laypeople now that many apps (such as Discord) will strip EXIF data but others (websites, some chat apps) don't.

	▲	Barbing 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Important point: > It's extra confusion to laypeople now that many apps (such as Discord) will strip EXIF data but others (websites, some chat apps) don't. You've given me a lot of sympathy for the young'uns whose first experiences on the web might have been with EXIF-safe apps. Then one day they use a web browser to send a photo, and there's an entirely new behavior they've never learned.

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raw_anon_1111 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This is honestly a horrible argument. Any app on Android can still get EXIF data