Yandex reverse image search is very good. I use it more than tineye, bing, or goog. It either gives you the exact matches if it can find them, or else it can infer what is desired and show many similar matches.
Also, such data collection abilities are generally limited to governments, so it was clear that many of them (US first and foremost) would ask for exclusion of certain individuals, and so forth, and so on, so the public tools were crippled.
Yandex image search does have some facial recognition, but it also seems bit-starved and/or mixed with text search (there's a bigger chance to match if the name and surname is present).
Also, Google is pretty Victorian about porn these days. It's almost like it has a whitelist of “acceptable” porn sites to suit the tastes of potentially angry old ladies.
In some browsers/profiles I use a "Search by Image" extension that still works properly.
When Chrome first made Lens the built-in image search, there was a way to turn it off. Does anyone know if that's still possible by some more-hidden method?
And in quantity, it seems like 9/10th of the content is gone.
the regulations don't apply to Microsoft apparently, because even goddamn Bing has been better at it than Google for years now.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-alters-images...
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Centre+P%C3%A9nitentiaire+d...
A quick trip over to Yandex, and there they were in their full glory:
https://yandex.com/maps/10502/paris/?l=sat&ll=2.340173%2C48....
If I have to choose between the two, I'll go with the US one.
Russia sent agents to blow up an ammunition depot ~15 kilometers from where I lived (google "Vrbetice 2014" if interested), killing 2 people. Russia regularly poisons and assassinates people. I mean, I'm no big fish to be interesting for Russia, but still the comparison comes out clear.
I prefer handing my data to privacy-breaching companies if the alternative would be handing data over to a state my government is currently holding a proxy war against.
In practice I just use a dumbphone and turn on my smartphone only to get a taxi (Yandex) or maybe see if my bus is coming (again Yandex). But my wife has her smartphone always on spying on us, not to mention all my colleagues. Also on my laptop I do use Yandex market, maps and read articles on Zen…
I can imagine that deep awareness of digital security issues may make one's life better in some situations but there's always a risk of becoming too much of an activist here. I think I'm quite geeky already.
It is unfortunate that there appears to be only one way to reclaim our privacy,and that is through the passing of new laws and regulations. However, due to the way that laws are passed in the United States, I am not very optimistic. For instance, sometimes unrelated laws are attached to necessary budget bills in order for them to pass, or a three hundred-page bill of legal jargon is given a misleading title such as the "PATRIOT" Act (The unpatriotic bill). Furthermore, both political parties do not seem particularly supportive of privacy, if anything they appear to be opposed to it. We need to somehow make this an important political issue in 2024.
Have you had an opportunity to discuss their views on privacy and the currently established political culture in the US with those in their 70s and 80s?
That's one thing that is probably the same in most countries... at least we know it is also true for USA and Russia.