I’m wondering if the issue isn’t Google. I frequently get logged out of my Google account, sometimes while I’m working on a Google doc in Chrome!
Hi!
New to iNaturalist (and the forum). I’ve created my account with a Google login, out of convenience, and used it for a short while. The asking for access to all images is of course a huge warning sign, and also pretty annoying as one has to remove that over-wide access after each login.
If I understand this thread correctly, the issue has been known for several years, and sharing images through Google Photos/Drive has been useless (due to blocked geo data) for almost as long? Is there any reason that acces request is still there, or is it h´just that it’s hard to remove from the code? If it’s the latter, maybe you could add a clear warning for people to not use their Google account to log in to begin with, unless they create a Google account more or less specifically to use with iNaturalist?
Google and Apple Sign In buttons have been removed from the Sign Up screens of the app and website for a long time now, I believe over a year, although they do still appear on the Log In screens. So they’re definitely de-emphasized, but obviously people still use them, like you did. I don’t think we need more pop-ups or messages as part of the sign-up process.
I wouldn’t say useless, you can still import the photos but they contain no geo data. My personal preference would remove Google Photos import from the website, but I believe the last time we checked there were still a significant amount of people importing Google Photos. We’ll have to run those numbers again, though.