Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
neowin.net
neowin.net
I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages, though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts.
The feature makes a lot of sense, of course. WhatsApp is to many countries across the globe what texting and calling is to Americans. If your smart assistant can't even interact with WhatsApp, it's basically useless for many people.
Edit: ah, that explains why I can't make Gemini read my messages to me, Google's own documentation (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928) says it can't:
What Gemini can’t do with WhatsApp
Read or summarize your messages
Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages
Add or play audio or videos in your messages
Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications
Does anyone know how I can make Gemini read messages? I can't even find the assistant settings necessary for that stuff to function.
Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do
with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the
way you would have to enable any other random app to do it.
Apple Intelligence has similar marketing. In last year's WWDC, there was the whole "Siri, when is my mom's flight landing?" segment (see https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/101/ at 1h22m) that didn't generate any controversy. So for some reason people think Siri should rightfully be an OS-level feature but Gemini should not. Got it. I guess Apple's PR is just that much better than Google's.
The line is blurry, but Microsoft was positioning Internet Explorer as an OS level feature, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...:
“Microsoft argued that the merging of Windows and IE was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and inextricably linked, and that consumers were receiving the benefits of IE for free.”
Apple somewhat similarly argued that the iOS App Store is an OS level feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple#Background:
“Apple has further argued that it requires iOS apps to use its storefront to "ensure that iOS apps meet Apple's high standards for privacy, security, content, and quality" and avoid exposing iOS users to risks from alternative storefronts.”
In both cases justice departments (the ones who draw those lines) disagreed with those claims.
But it's unfair to assume bad faith like that.
Perhaps they merely need access to the encrypted messages in order to provide a better user experience, by serving more relevant and better personalised adverts?
Generates billions for Apple and is growing rapidly, since they implemented increasingly aggressive "privacy features" to block their competitors.
I thought I was being clear when I said that. My comment was referring to the general perception among masses.
Google's reputation is further tainted by a certain sneakiness. Like being caught using private data for AI training - despite people opting out of it. All because of cleverly worded legal language that allowed other Google subsidiaries unfettered access.[1]
[1]: Google Can Train Search AI With Web Content After AI Opt-Out https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-03/google-ca...
HN people just like to live in their own bubble thinking no other opinion is valid other than their own.
Eeewww.
We need a mobile OS competitor.
I am seriously considering a move to Fairphone with /e/os.
GrapheneOS would be a possibility, but I don't trust Google to make decent hardware, so not super excited to get a Pixel phone.
So far there was a solution for everything, I don't do online banking on the phone though.
I wonder if LineageOS might solve this problem already though, /e/os probably would as well
I am sure a detailed writeup will be very appreciated if you bother and manage.
Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS exist.
But those are typically community efforts, so software support is not certain. It sucks when so many things just expect you to have a working cell phone.
Google already violates the DMA in some minor ways (like how Chromebook clipboard sync can alter the clipboard in the background, but tools like KDE Connect and Microsoft's My Phone cannot).
On the other hand, the default "assistant" app is one the user can pick freely in the settings so if whatever API WhatsApp exposes is also usable for Bixby/Bing/Claude/ChatGPT, I imagine things would fit the phone just fine.
As for Siri, I think Apple customers just don't really care about Apple gatekeeping apps like these. For some reason, they seem to like Siri (even though I can't get it to do basic things for me, it's somehow even worse than Gemini) and for some reason they trust Apple to access their personal information, so there's no need for controversy.
However, operating system technology has come a long way since - the trick is to control not only the computer but the government.
That doesn't make it any better or more acceptable. If anything, it makes it much, much worse. I absolutely don't want any LLM to have OS level access to my data, period.
... and GraphenOS isn't exactly a fork, but it's plugging away, fighting the good fight, doing things like making Google Play Services both optional and a lot less privileged on the phone than it thinks it is.
These are basic core (and so far immovable) privacy principles, lets not lose sight of this when we delve into whataboutism.
I shouldn't need Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas, Android is basically like iPhone now, just with more faux choice of vendors and less quality control.
I also can't really find the mechanism at use here. I don't know if WhatsApp is exposing some kind of dedicated assistant API that an alternative assistant (the one you can pick in the settings) might be able to use.
It's also notoriously the one popular app that intentionally doesn't offer any kind of API access for normal users - it only has one to allow companies to automate advertising bots.
Sacrificing human freedom in the name of security is a long, dark, and well-trodden path that I don't think we ought to venture down any further.
There are some extremely useful features that you can implement with AI, but currently only at the OS level, not with normal app permissions-- namely live translation of audio streams that belong to another app (calls, video playback, etc.).
But I suppose you're still right; it would still be better if Android had an API for sharing app audio streams like this.
Google has Gemma? So they could also blow Apple out of the water by competing directly there.
It happens on-device where possible.
"Although Apple attempts to do as much as possible on device, certain features require real-time input from Apple servers." Source: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-priv...
If that's a slap on the wrist, then we can be sure that Google is doing it.
good luck. why do you think they bothered to create an OS in the first place? like, what did you think a data mining company would create an OS for?
Gemini uses the same APIs and permissions as any other Android app.
Google has already been successfully sued this year in CA for siphoning off data from phones that are idle and the remainder of states is in process [0].
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-314-million-verdict-...
Without details on how Gemini is interacting with WhatsApp, it's hard to say if Google is privileged or not. It's possible Facebook just struck a deal with Google.
Current HN title: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
Even aside from the false equivalence of Google and Gemini, the current HN title is pure clickbait.
The first archived version of this page containing the "can't do" list was published Nov 2024. The email is about a change "making it easier" to be rolled out July 2025 so I would not bet someone else's money on this page being up to date. We'll find out I guess.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241107174006/https://support.g...
My normal "Google's own documentation" experience is the other way round - to be told something is possible when it certainly isn't.
Crooked billionaires shouldn't enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
I don't believe Google has the tact to care as long as they look like a market competitor in something.
It was probably Apple being incompetent with their AI approach rather than being careful
Structurally Apple is in a disadvantage, in the AI race. And no amount of waiting, or polish is going to help them - unless they partner with OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.
However, Apple did have a use case that would be an obvious improvement. The very thing LLMs excel at is at processing and generating natural language. Improving Siri with LLM capabilities was the obvious move, especially at a time where LLM providers are willing to burn cash to reach a wider use base. It speaks volumes of a company that is just rent seeking their position in the smartphone market at this point.
Not the best example since Siri has been misunderstanding us for many, many years.
You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late
Why make up stuff like this? Siri confirms everything that sends data.
Me: Hey Siri, text Jen [my wife] I love you.
Siri: OK, texting Johnny Chan [my ex-boss] I love you.
Me: What NO!
Johnny: Uh...
That happened. It's not something I read about or made up. It went pretty much exactly like that.
It's disabled by default, but it's possible you turned it on by accident or got a bad default setting I suppose.
They have always been behind. Why would this time be any different?
That's too low of a probability for Apple to care. The probability that YOU would do it yourself by some random series of accidents is probably orders of magnitude higher than that.
Do you really think you're going to send 1,000,000 nudes to your wife without accidentally sending one to the wrong person!?
That seems like the wrong way to spin this hypothetical probability.
A quick search says there are 1.38B iPhone users worldwide. According to[0], 87.8% of 18+ year olds have sexted, so let's estimate that to mean 1.21B users. Even if we assume users only ever send one nude, that means 1,210 gaffes if you assume one in a million.
(Search: Steve Jobs predicted the future of AI)
I have no insider knowledge but to me on the outside it looks like the same old panicky hype-chasing we've all seen in other contexts. Some executives kept reading and hearing about AI AI AI!, and were terrified of being left behind. The many voices of reason within the company pointing out the correct risks and tradeoffs to consider were ignored while the over-confident voices blustered their way onto the roadmap.
(Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)
One wonders if you couldn't whip up something that would whip up a list of choices by operating locally only on the users history returning just a list of things to show on the page and forgetting it when the user closed the tab.
Most users won't understand how that works. As far as they're concerned "youtube watches what I do", and any explanations about how the algorithm runs locally but google can still see what you watch if they look at IP logs will be far beyond a typical users desire to understand.
As for what they should do, I think populating the homepage from the subscriptions list (either literally as an ordered list or by some algorithmic "watch time vs average watch time for this creator", I don't care) would be preferable.
Hence why I open a new private browser for each session.
I’m under the impression my use of private tabs & blockers & iCloud Private Relay is nearly useless when browsing sites of any sufficiently large company, and I won’t lie and say it’s not somewhat frustrating and disturbing.
The era of Google providing costly features to users with no benefit to itself is coming to an end.
If you pay for it, you can expect to not be the product.
How about paying once, owning a specific version and that's it?
In fact, I don't believe the ad model would have gone away if everyone started paying for a subscription. The bottom tier would still be filled with ads.
Ideally, the market would solve this. The companies that are pushing annoying would lose customers to the companies that don't. But since we don't live in a ideal world, I honestly think regulations would be the only way. Something like "If a customer pays for subscription in any way, you can't show ads" - and then let the companies put a realistic price to their subscription tiers, which makes it worthwhile for them.
I don't see what people find so grating about having a ad-load/cost spectrum. Maybe it's just confusion about the billing model.
You make it sound as if those were the only two options available..
You can give away software, but running a service costs money. P2p messaging can be free (and signal exists), but nothing like free and adless YouTube or Facebook is going to happen regardless whether google or meta do anything to prevent it.
agreed its trickier when its gets to stuff like youtube, but piracy being free and widely spread is an example of how its possible, just not well developed right now
there's also options where it's pay-as-you-go with stuff like bitcoin (e.g. i pay $0.01 to watch a video) where it's effectively free but on large scale does cover the costs of infra
Things require labor. Labor costs money. Ergo, people giving you stuff require money, somehow. A tetris clone requires so little labour, that a well-off person with too much time (ergo labor) on their hands can give you that for free, but that's not scalable for 99% of important stuff.
Because capitalism, they also require more money, YoY, than last year, meaning they can't just make a steady stream of profit. They need more profit every year.
Contrast that certain TV dayparts saturated with subprime ads promoting Medicare scams and other offerings for people who can’t spend their own money on things except for an occasional ad for a car dealer because if people weren’t driving you’d have much less reason to call a personal injury lawyer.
Ad free tiers for Netflix and whatnot have the problem that people who won’t pay for ad free aren’t really worth advertising to.
Now, all this is of course an inevitable consequence of capitalism, but that's not a conversation anyone herre seems ready for.
Since I can't remove ads by paying, I don't pay for a single subscription content service. The pirate sites have stuff the day it premiers, and there's no nonsense about shows split between services. Also the broken promise of being able to change language easily is actually available on those sites. I had to buy then return shin godzilla from prime video - 2 separate versions. Haven't bought or rented on there since. Also had more than one service saying my stuff is not hdcp compliant when it is. Buggy, laggy messes.
I know im a minority but there is money on the table I would gladly pay for a decent service.
This happens even when people pay for the products. See for instance the enshittification of streaming "ad free" services.
Anyone running into this problem willingly opted in to having surveillance software on their device. Meta’s track record is not secret.
Maybe the problem is what you consider a privacy violation, other users consider a feature.
Don't act like your opinion is the only one that matters. You may not, but other people do care about their privacy.
"Here's the thing: Google promises that under normal circumstances, Gemini cannot read or summarize your WhatsApp messages. But, and this is a big but, with the "help" of the Google Assistant or the Utilities app, it may view your messages (including images), read and respond to your WhatsApp notifications, and more."
Doesn't matter what your opinion is on privacy, google doesn't give you the option to opt out. - "regardless of whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off."
> What Gemini can’t do with WhatsApp
> Read or summarize your messages
> Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages
> Add or play audio or videos in your messages
> Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications
Of course, it's possible neowin says Google is lying, but they'll need to come up with something better than "maybe something may happen in the future" if they're going to make these claims.
If someone is concerned with their privacy by this feature, then they can just not use it. If someone is concerned that someone else might use this feature on private communications they had with the user, then that person misunderstands privacy and needs to realize that once they communicate their remarks to some other party, their ability to control their privacy to their own standards goes out the window generally, and not just with AI apps.
Of course, the easy solution is that nobody has conversations that might need privacy anymore; people can just always be in public persona mode. Hopefully we don’t end up with a society made up of inauthentic lonely people as a result.
That's tech capitalism in a nutshell.
Same with all those car and watch ads in magazines. It's not like regular people are constantly looking to buy a new car. But the brand must be etched into brains. Your neighbor must be reasonably convinced that people around him are on the same page regarding the prestige of a certain brand, else it's not worth spending on. So even if you can't afford whatever car model, the fact that you're aware that it's prestigious is already worth it.
This is somewhat weaker in personalized online ads because your neighbor can't know what ads you saw. Billboards and super bowl ads a much better for establishing common knowledge, but perhaps that's why influencer-based marketing is gaining ground. All followers know that all followers saw the embedded ad. Maybe they should introduce ads where it says "Your friend Joe Schmo watched the following ad:"
You must be new here, have you not yet unlocked the wonders of credit card debt?
I assume it's because I don't really browse for buyables unless I have the intent of buying something immediately. On a personal level, I fail entirely to understand the value proposition in web advertising.
Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention.
More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.
It kind of reminds me of how the internet used to be. Back then, you had to go to a specific room to use the family computer. The internet was something you visited. Now, tech is everywhere, from our pockets to our bathrooms. I’m not sure I want AI following that same path.
The fundamental catch here is that 80%+ of the future benefit will likely come from the very thing that erodes privacy: deep integration and context. Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context (haha scary I know!), prompting would be so much more powerful.
That's the core, uncomfortable trade-off we're all facing now.
Windows Recall [1] is this for your PC activities (not yet fed to AI, but I see no reason to think it will stay this way). Meta is working on glasses to record the IRL part. But your phone is probably enough for most of it. Joining Zoom meetings with AI note takers is getting popular [2]. Not long until in-person meetings will have AI listening in from the phone mics, of course just to increase productivity and to summarize and remind you later. Convenience!
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-ste... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916
At some point, some reverse engineer will publish a writeup either confirming or denying how local these models are, how much data (and maybe even what data) is being sent up to the mothership, and how these integrations appear to be implemented.
It's not perfect, and it only offers a point-in-time view of the situation, but it's the best we can do in an intensely closed-source world. I'd be happier if these companies published the code (regardless of the license) and allowed users to test for build parity.
I can understand why: you’re only using locally-run AI models every so often (maybe a few times a day), but when you use it, you still want it to be fast.
So it will need to be a pretty heavy AI chip in your phone to be able to deliver that, which spends most of the time idling.
Since compute costs are insane for AI, it only makes sense to optimize this and do the inference in the cloud.
Maybe at some point local AI will be possible, but they’ll always be able to run much more powerful models in the cloud, because it makes much more sense from an economics point of view.
It's not clear to me why certain classes of things still end up farmed out to the cloud (such as this, or is it?). Maybe their LLM hasn't been built in a very pluggable fashion.
... although, to be fair, they're negotiating with OpenAI to run the models in "secure enclaves", which should, assuming everything works right which is a huge assumption, keep Apple or anybody else from reaching inside and seeing what the model is "thinking about".
What is that power? Honest question...
It's hard to predict exactly though. I remember thinking in 2001 that nobody except the busiest businessmen would need a cell phone. A landline at home is perfectly enough and in special cases there are phone booths. And in 2011 I thought the same about smartphones. Why would I need email while walking in the street? Can't it wait until I'm home at the desktop? If I need computer stuff on the go, I can take a laptop. Similarly, I'm not quite sure how exactly it will go but probably in 10 years you'll need to have an AI agent to function in society. The legacy infrastructure decays if nobody uses it even if you'd prefer not to jump on the bandwagon. Today you often MUST have an app downloaded to do things, e.g. some museums require it, sometimes government services are much more tedious otherwise. Some restaurants only have a QR code and no physical menu. Often news items (from school, or local municipality) are only shared in social media. Etc. etc. I can easily imagine that there will be things you can't manually do in 2035, only by asking your AI agent to do it for you. And it will scan all your data to make sure that what you're doing is impeccable in intent and safety and permissibility (like an inverse captcha: you must be Gemini or another approved bot to do the action. As a human you have to jump a million hoops that maybe takes days of providing various details etc. And Gemini will be easy to spook and will be opinionated about whether you should really get to do that action or not.). And it will communicate behind your back with the AI of the other party to decide everything. Or who knows what. But it will be necessary to use.
I honestly thought tapping screen to pick a pizza and all toppings you want etc is the convenient option but OK. Maybe it's a difference between people like me who like to browse menu and people who like to inquire with the waiter.
Booking a flight is a challenge (starting with captchas and hidden options they require opt out) for a living person already and expecting an LLM to do it is very far fetched. Planning a road trip, that's just robbing yourself of fun.
But because I asked & you answered I should say "thanks not for me". Maybe if I am Elon Msuk at some point and don't care about it falling for some dark pattern than minuses me $1k by accident I will be fine using assistants but then do I choose bots over living people in that scenario? Doubtful...
Frankly, this sounds like a potential nightmare to me. Almost certainly, the big techCos that today use algorithmic "customer support" to randomly flag, ban and screw with users for completely opaque reasons and little recourse will try running all of the nice things you describe. It's very plausible that sooner or later it will become harder and harder to do any of those things by more conventional, atomic means, making you rely ever more on integrated connections between product/service providers and these ordering systems (it's "convenient", you see?) only to suddenly find yourself flagged, blocked, or banned for any number of idiotic, blandly brainless reasons and shut out of the most basic elements of your daily life.
That people would readily agree to sign up for such dependence on these opaque things is a mystery to me, and I hope a huge pushback against it happens at some point.
If you think I exaggerate, bear in mind how often such things already happen on a lesser scale in a world where having social media, a smartphone and accounts with services like Google's becomes necessary in some contexts. Also note how often someone or another finds themselves fucked when these existing dependencies suddenly get shut down because some bullshit algorithm supposedly said so.
It's also bad enough that payment systems and banking can be cut off to people who (having broken no law at all) hold some politically controversial, publicly activist discourse, or that banking and certain basic services can be withheld in some bizarre way because you live a life in which your residency or other life choices are outside the average. To have the same risks apply for ever more minor reasons across a huge swathe of just living your life is a monstrously insidious way of marginalizing and homogenizing social divergence.
Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API? If yes, then it seems like this is not only on Google.
If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Are they intercepting network traffic? That seems unlikely, given its probably end to end encrypted and the decryption happens within the scope of the Whatsapp process.
Why not... they control the OS, it'd be trivial to add hooks to the "draw widget" command to intercept that it's about to draw a text widget for WhatsApp, and then ask it to log the text.
WhatsApp data is encrypted, however, the keys are on the device itself and accessible on Android. There are many third-party apps that support transferring WhatsApp data from one phone to another, and some even claim so between Android and iOS devices. As I understand, the chats are in some usual database format. So anyone having access to the device can read the data even without WhatsApp being there itself (as far as the data is there).
At the very least you'd need to root your device, but even that might not be quite enough going by my memory of trying to export my chats once. I remember the only documented working path included something like installing a shady, modified APK of a legacy WhatsApp version with an outdated encryption method to a second device and then somehow getting the new app to write a backup in the legacy format, to then restore to the fake second device and decrypt. I quit there because the risk of actually losing my entire backup seemed too high. And that was about five years ago, so I'd assume if anything, it's even more difficult today.
>When granted, an app with accessibility permission can:
Read screen content (including text and buttons in other apps)
Detect user interactions (like taps, swipes, or gestures)
Navigate between apps and the system UI
Monitor app launches and foreground/background changes
Access and control other apps indirectly
Perform gestures or clicks on behalf of the useWhatsapp has dark patterns that "guide" you to "archive" your chats on google drive.
I'm not saying it's impossible that Google just grants their own app an (IMO indefensible) exception to this. But the potential shitstorm would be massive, so I assume they probably use some other way, such as screen recording or accessibility features.
You can search "Gemini" in your settings app.
Thanks, but that only leads to a screen asking whether I want to enable Gemini. I decline, and it goes back to the previous screen, without opening any settings form.
We told you this would happen.
I can. Several, actuallly
> All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse.
They did. Those that didn't/won't, do have my telephone number, though.
God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.
(Until they have their own phone.)
... looks over at Framework
Tech corporations and their managers are basically data rapists
I have bad news for you: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
The EU wants to exfiltrate chats as well.
Now ? I guess some people really need a reality check. Google controls the OS which runs of your phone and has access to all your data. Just like Apple or Microsoft.
https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en
Documentation is unclear, but it appears Gemini is always connected to Utilities, and Utilities is always connected to Whatsapp, and the data flow between these apps is not documented.
With Gemini having access, those who are happy to give AI access to their apps would surely prefer Gemini as it will be phone wide instead of meta ai which only runs inside WhatsApp.
Siri can't even pronounce my own name correctly!
1. Security > Privacy > Convenience 2. Security > Convenience > Privacy 3. Privacy > Security > Convenience 4. Privacy > Convenience > Security 5. Convenience > Security > Privacy 6. Convenience > Privacy > Security
There's no privacy without security.
I wonder what percentage of WhatsApp users backup to Google cloud, and what percentage of those use encryption.
That gave me a good belly laugh. Thankyou Google.
Having the system level agent needing to interface with the UI in such a messy way doesn't feel like the best way for it to accomplish its tasks.
Do you not have to prompt Gemini to initiate any search?
I'm not an android dev so I'm not positive about this but I expect whatsapp is shipping their app with "App Actions" interface giving the assisstant certain actions it can perform, so this is not wholesale database access. See [0]
App Actions extend your in-app functionality to Assistant, enabling users to access your app's features by voice. When a user invokes an App Action, Assistant matches the query to a BII declared in your shortcuts.xml resource, launching your app at the requested screen or displaying an Android widget.
You declare BIIs in your app using Android capability elements. When you upload your app using the Google Play console, Google registers the capabilities declared in your app and makes them available for users to access from Assistant.
https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/over...
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/...
>Devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher include several text-processing features that make it easier for accessibility services to identify and operate on specific units of text that appear on screen.
I don't know how they believe that this is remotely a good thing, or if this is even in accordance with the GDPR.
Now just assume something odd happens and it pulls in a couple of your WhatsApp messages into its Activity History.
I do not use WhatsApp, but I have other apps I do not want google to see.
Which means, AFAICT, it doesn't matter if you turn it off or not, Google still collects information and stores it for 72 hours as part of the core functionality of the operating system.
I (and others, and Google has not disabused anyone of this when asked), understand that to mean "Gemini always has access to a sliding 72 hour window of all your data, even if this feature is off".
You think it means: "Once you turn it off, Gemini has access for another 72 hours then it has no access".
The later is less alarming for sure, but the former appears what is actually happening.
Previously "off" meant "off". Now "off" means "only send/retain data for 72 hours".
Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics, fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make the two governments look more similar than ever.