This is a great point from the author. The ease of access to archiving what is most dear and important to us is amazing especially compared to photo books, just mere two decades ago being the...
This monetization of emotional memory isn’t just off-putting in theory; it can also inhibit personal growth, as I was slowly learning. “Forgetting used to be the default, and that also meant you could edit your memories,” says Kate Eichhorn, who researches culture and media at the New School in New York City and wrote the book The End of Forgetting. “Editing memories” in this context refers to a psychological process, not a Photoshop tool. The human brain is constantly editing memories to incorporate new information and, in some cases, to cope with trauma.
This is a great point from the author. The ease of access to archiving what is most dear and important to us is amazing especially compared to photo books, just mere two decades ago being the norm. At the same time it can affect us negatively by not allowing the person to move on. Be it good or bad, there's continuous memories being being renewed and witnessed again. Not by our perception of the events, but by archived data, whatever it may be.
All along there was the option to go nuclear. The big delete. I could trash all my old photos in Apple’s and Google’s apps, obliterate accounts, remove widgets, delete cookies, and clear my browser cache again and again. I could use Instagram’s archive tool, tell any and every app I no longer wanted to see their crappy ads until they got the hint, and quietly unfriend and unfollow. I could turn off On This Day notifications in Facebook and untag my ex’s face.
I managed to do half the work. But that’s exactly it: It’s work. It’s designed that way. It requires a thankless amount of mental and emotional energy, just like some relationships. And even if you find the time or energy to navigate settings and submenus and customer support forms, you still won’t have ultimate control over the experience. In Apple Photos, you can go to Memories, go through the collage the app has assembled for you, delete a collage, untag a person or group of people, or tell the app you want to see fewer Memories like it. The one thing you can’t do? Opt out of the Memories feature entirely. Google’s options are slightly more granular: You can indicate that there’s a time period from which you don’t want to see photos, in addition to hiding specific people. Which works, I suppose, if the time period you’re considering isn’t eight years.
Great article. Sometimes I get so worried thinking about how much shit kids today have to be aware of when starting out their online adventure. It's like having a 25 yo make decisions about...
Great article. Sometimes I get so worried thinking about how much shit kids today have to be aware of when starting out their online adventure. It's like having a 25 yo make decisions about pension. We know it's a really important thing to consider but the consequences are so far in the future that we simply can't muster any motivation for these potential dangers.
Yael Marzan, the product team lead for Google Photos, said the search giant was inspired to launch Memories because they realized that the majority of the pictures being stored in Google Photos were never looked at again. Over Google Meet she told me, “Clearly your intent was to store them, to have this content so you could go back and look at them. To be reminded of the good memories.”
Weirdly enough I haven't given this a lot of thought and it makes total sense (on paper). It's giving you an opportunity to revisit old photos that you on you own would never see again. Albeit it's just an excuse to lure more engagement out of us it actually makes sense. On the other hand how do they know we want to look at it again even if it was a good memory? I've lost hundreds maybe thousands of photos through the years because I switched phones and although I probably will find myself in a situation or two where I regret this it's actually comforting to know that it's just gone. Like real memories.
A customer service rep for WeddingWire told me that accounts can be deactivated but never permanently deleted.
Is this even legal?
In general I just get pissed off when I hear any CEO form a tech company speak. The monetization of human beings via technology just oozes through every word at all times no matter how many fine ideas on how to improve our lives they have. I know, I know that's just capitalism...but I fucking hate it. I hate that the wild Internet I learned to surf with the vast and uncontrollable amount of information is even more capitalist and corporate now than the real world we tried to escape back then.
It sounds like an American company, so it is. California has stricter laws, but many companies are only willing to take action for California residents only. Practically the only rights that most...
Is this even legal?
It sounds like an American company, so it is. California has stricter laws, but many companies are only willing to take action for California residents only.
Practically the only rights that most Americans care about are their own misconceived notions of the right to speech and firearms.
This is the weirdest thing: My iPhone (which I believe does not monetize any of this but who knows?) periodically spams my home screen with "Memories", random groups of reference photos I took...
This is the weirdest thing: My iPhone (which I believe does not monetize any of this but who knows?) periodically spams my home screen with "Memories", random groups of reference photos I took when I was working on a shed and maybe there was a smiling person in the corner somewhere. It's occasionally cute and I trust Apple to not go completely evil with it (not Google, though!) but... there's no way to turn that shit off! There literally isn't! Eventually, I found a way for it not to be posted on my home screen but the albums are spammed full of procedural generated memory albums with music and shit that I never asked for and that I'd rather not spend processing power and attention on.
If I want to revel in memories of that one trip I took 3 years ago, I can navigate to that date. Only that iOS now fills the screen with hard-to-navigate rows of pictures instead of grouping by day taken. But I digress.
It's weird that this shit cannot be turned off! It feels like some 90s "multimedia experience" that we've finally grown out of but it somehow creeped back in through social media curation. I get that, say, Facebook needs to keep their "engagement" numbers high but why Apple is doing it with my gallery is not comprehensible to me. It's occasionally cute but why is there no way to turn it off?
This is a great point from the author. The ease of access to archiving what is most dear and important to us is amazing especially compared to photo books, just mere two decades ago being the norm. At the same time it can affect us negatively by not allowing the person to move on. Be it good or bad, there's continuous memories being being renewed and witnessed again. Not by our perception of the events, but by archived data, whatever it may be.
Great article. Sometimes I get so worried thinking about how much shit kids today have to be aware of when starting out their online adventure. It's like having a 25 yo make decisions about pension. We know it's a really important thing to consider but the consequences are so far in the future that we simply can't muster any motivation for these potential dangers.
Weirdly enough I haven't given this a lot of thought and it makes total sense (on paper). It's giving you an opportunity to revisit old photos that you on you own would never see again. Albeit it's just an excuse to lure more engagement out of us it actually makes sense. On the other hand how do they know we want to look at it again even if it was a good memory? I've lost hundreds maybe thousands of photos through the years because I switched phones and although I probably will find myself in a situation or two where I regret this it's actually comforting to know that it's just gone. Like real memories.
Is this even legal?
In general I just get pissed off when I hear any CEO form a tech company speak. The monetization of human beings via technology just oozes through every word at all times no matter how many fine ideas on how to improve our lives they have. I know, I know that's just capitalism...but I fucking hate it. I hate that the wild Internet I learned to surf with the vast and uncontrollable amount of information is even more capitalist and corporate now than the real world we tried to escape back then.
It sounds like an American company, so it is. California has stricter laws, but many companies are only willing to take action for California residents only.
Practically the only rights that most Americans care about are their own misconceived notions of the right to speech and firearms.
This is the weirdest thing: My iPhone (which I believe does not monetize any of this but who knows?) periodically spams my home screen with "Memories", random groups of reference photos I took when I was working on a shed and maybe there was a smiling person in the corner somewhere. It's occasionally cute and I trust Apple to not go completely evil with it (not Google, though!) but... there's no way to turn that shit off! There literally isn't! Eventually, I found a way for it not to be posted on my home screen but the albums are spammed full of procedural generated memory albums with music and shit that I never asked for and that I'd rather not spend processing power and attention on.
If I want to revel in memories of that one trip I took 3 years ago, I can navigate to that date. Only that iOS now fills the screen with hard-to-navigate rows of pictures instead of grouping by day taken. But I digress.
It's weird that this shit cannot be turned off! It feels like some 90s "multimedia experience" that we've finally grown out of but it somehow creeped back in through social media curation. I get that, say, Facebook needs to keep their "engagement" numbers high but why Apple is doing it with my gallery is not comprehensible to me. It's occasionally cute but why is there no way to turn it off?