Thanks for making it easy, friend. It takes a lot of clicking to turn this stuff off lol.

The only option is smart features, on or off. That requires Google to read the email to categorize them and do a lot of basic stuff. It doesn't let you narrowly have more privacy on specific features. It's all or nothing, and if you get a lot of emails then it's hard to turn it off if you already use categories. Google always does all or nothing because they know people need some of it, same with location. It has to be precise location tracking to use things, you can't just do rough location.

Understand that basically ANYTHING that "uses AI" is using you for training data.

At its simplest, it is the old fashioned A/B testing where you are used as part of a reinforcement/labeling pipeline. Sometimes it gets considerably more bullshit as your very queries and what would make you make them are used to "give you a better experience" and so forth.

And if you read any of the EULAs (for the stuff that google opted users into...) you'll see verbiage along those lines.

Of course, the reality is that google is going to train off our data regardless. But that is why it is a good idea to decouple your life from google as much as possible. It takes a long ass time but... no better time than today.

Not that I've seen, no.

Good news, I already had that disabled

They don’t give a shit about what the law or terms say. They’ll just do whatever and if caught pay pennies on the dollar in fines.

We’ve seen them do this and win time and time again with the google library project and other actions. All the AI companies are training on any and all data they have access to, laws be damned. It’s the MO for any new venture capital / tech project with unlimited profits if someone gets there first.

i closed reader view and scrolled just to see and wow the POPUPS and 50% of the page length being ads

WHAT

who uses the internet like this and finds it acceptable?!

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR_ghQEN2SgB5ZpiIIzlJvtXhXHfEf1M7

TheHatedOne on YT has some good resources

You can also find degoogle lists with alternatives for each app, e.g. here: https://git.tycrek.com/archive/degoogle

My advice to you is to take one step at a time, explore at your own pace. It's easy to get overwhelmed, but IMO each step is beneficial on its own. E.g. instead of moving to Proton.me in one night (or any other email provider), first start by forwarding the emails and see if you're ok with the product

There's no guide since everyone's use case is different, and 100% is only obtainable if you avoid all tech. GrapheneOS or buy an iPhone are the best options. I went the grapheneos route, but I still use google play services as I found its the safest way to still get apps for now, and the disconnect from google is still much more than using stock android. I moved email to proton, maps I use OsmAnd.