this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself

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Can anyone tell this meme is true or false? I don't have Gspy so I cannot test this

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[–] _lunar@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

never in my life have i ever said "hey" anything to my phone and i intend to keep it that way

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 3 points 18 hours ago

Well that doesn't mean it isn't listening. Waiting for the day.

[–] baconsunday@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago (7 children)

i love all the hate google gets

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The meme makes it sound like they turn off the server transmit feature. Though I also could believe this meme being false as well. "Ok Google" detection runs locally on the device as training a model to detect that and only that accurately without a server is easy to do and costs a lot less than having every device continuously transmitting the microphone. So it's possible mute just disables transmission to the Internet rather than the mic.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 1 points 19 hours ago

Para español, oprima el numerous uno....or say "español".....c'mon! Say it!....saaay it!!!

[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

It's true for hardware that has dedicated low-power keyword detection hardware. I know my Pixel 1 had this behaviour. Haven't tested it on my current phone since I actually have it enabled...

[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 134 points 2 days ago (30 children)

Don't know about Google home, but google meet is definitely like this. You mute your mic from the UI, you speak, and a small popup tells you something like, "are you trying to speak, your mic is off".

Something like this also happened on Short Circuit (a channel of Linus Tech Tips) when testing Meta Glasses. Riley, the host was talking to it, and after the convo ended, he asked, "are you still listening?" And meta replied, "No".

So, yes, it is safe to assume that the microphones are always listening and probably recording. These things are spywares and do not belong in private places like homes.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 109 points 2 days ago (14 children)

Muting microphone in a meeting is very different, the point is you don't want other attendees to hear you, not the meeting software.
Otherwise agreed, the only way this can be 100% trusted is using a hw switch, which we won't find on any phones and only a handful of laptops.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago

I'd be happy with just being able to open something up and confirm that the mute button controls a solenoid that cuts the actual line to the mic but everything is so damn tiny for no apparent reason. You'd have to break it either way just to find out.

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[–] dudesss@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 day ago (38 children)

f-droid's website https://f-droid.org/ has a link to https://keepandroidopen.org/ which says in Google will lock down Android in September,

If you were planning on reformatting your phone to GrapheneOS, LineageOS, PostmarketOS, or UbuntuTouch, now is the time to do it.

[–] HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yeah, would love to, but last time I checked my phone is not supported

[–] 520@lemmy.zip 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Shit, not even with Lineage? What model is your phone?

[–] HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 1 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Samsung Galaxy A35

Yeah, I just checked Lineage and it's not on the list.

[–] 520@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

So, there are unsupported builds of Lineage for the phone. Can definitely understand why you wouldn't want to try that though.

[–] HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 1 points 17 hours ago

I may try unsupported builds on a phone I don't use, but for that I would need to buy phone.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

The problem with Samsung (last time I checked at least) is that the moment you unlock the bootloader (which is needed to install anything other than stock), there's a flag raised voiding the warranty. That flag from what I know is acting like a hardware fuse, so it's pretty much non-reversible. Shame, really, because Samsung do have some really nice things in terms of hardware.

[–] HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Well, It's also a quite old phone. I was never one to replace something just because newer version is available.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

Yeah, but if it's new, you either put up with the stock firmware, or unlock it right away, giving up the 1 or 2 years of warranty (depending on the region).

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[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I turned off "ok google" detection in my phone. Still it triggers incorrectly from the car radio sounding similar to "ok google". In theory turning off the detection should mean that the assistant only starts when I tap the microphone icon, but that's not my experience.

I can confirm, google is always listening, and it's not even very good at pretending not to.

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