I’ve noticed that you need to enable Google Javascript if you want to:
import new data into iNaturalist
view your data on a map (even on OpenStreetMap)
maybe other features?
Google is far from being a nonprofit, open-access NGO dedicated to human rights.
So I wonder what personal data Google collects—and for what purposes.
I know that this connection to Google is a moral red line for some people, who refuse to create an iNaturalist account.
Wouldn’t it be possible to find a Google-free alternative for using iNaturalist?
the iNaturalist website uses Google Maps to render maps, for basemaps (other than the OSM layer), and for geocoding. unless something has changed recently, Google Maps provides these services to iNaturalist at no cost. you could ask iNat to use alternatives, but be prepared to explain why and how they should get the money to use those alternatives. simply that you want a Google-free corner of the internet probably isn’t a good enough reason, and it probably isn’t completely possible either.
Google also provides much of the underlying code and infrastructure that runs much of the internet. you could completely stop using the web or any technology for that matter, and you probably could never completely remove Google’s influence, since so much of the stuff that supports you still happens through code and infrastructure provided by Google.
if your goal is to stop things you see as bad behavior by a particular company, you’re not going to achieve that goal by going through iNaturalist. you need to go through your politicians or other means.
Google has invested billions into developing maps, and websites like iNaturalist, eBird, etc., benefit greatly from being able to incorporate those maps into their database.
Is it even possible to avoid Google? I mean my phone plan thru Verizon switched to Google for their texting app about two years ago. And Google Photos app is the default app in my phone; don’t know if there even is another app I could use to store and share all of my cell phone pics. And Google Chrome is by far the best browser for surfing the internet - I have tried so many others, like Firefox and Safari, but they suck. And any cell phone based GPS other than Google Maps sucks. It seems, at least to me, that avoiding all things Google would make life very difficult.
If anyone has ways of avoiding Google altogether, I would love to hear how you do it, and whether or not you deal with any inconveniences because of that choice. I’m thinking that iNaturalist could do away with Google, but that the website and phone app would then be so un-intuitive and difficult to use that 90% of us would just stop using iNaturalist altogether.
Your absolutely right that it’s impossible to completely purge google and maintain any productivity, and in fact, the only google product I still use… is their map. It’s that much better.
I rarely have problems with Firefox; when I do, I use Chromium which is a little less evil than Chrome. I use Protonmail instead of gmail. There are actually lots of good text and photo apps out there. I use both Textra and Signal.
The most important change I’ve made is switching from google searches - which have become dystopian AI swamps - to Kagi. Yes, there’s a nominal fee for Kagi, but it’s a phenomenal, incredibly customizable search engine. There’s also Ecosia, which is perfectly good, and its mission is righteous.
When trying to cast out the evil, the best approach I find is to enjoy the treasure hunt for better products. One here, one there. You end up finding little gems like Kagi.
I’m really surprised how dismissive this reply is. Protecting privacy is actually important to some people and Google doesn’t have a stellar track record on that front [1][2]. The OP’s goal isn’t changing Google’s bad behavior, it’s protecting their personal data from companies they don’t want to share it with. That shouldn’t be something they are forced to do in order to use iNaturalist. Wikimedia had the same issue with their Maps project where they needed to embed interactive maps with data overlays in articles. They tried to negotiate deals with Google and Apple, but neither would agree to adequate privacy protections, so Wikimedia ended up building their own system based on Leaflet, OpenStreetMap, and Wikidata. So I can’t agree with your suggestion that it “probably isn’t completely possible”. In fact, Wikimedia would probably be willing to share their system with iNaturalist if iNaturalist asked. It’s completely open source and the tile server is embeddable for affiliates: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps/External_usage. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Personally, I would love to see iNaturalist stop relying on Google and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask for.
Also, doesn’t @rademacherdan (iNatualist’s new Head of Product and Engineering) have experience building map tile services? This might be up his alley. I would love to hear Dan’s thoughts on this issue.
right now, someone could create their own app to interact with the iNaturalist system that removes all traces of Google Maps, but that still doesn’t remove all traces of Google that a user may experience. my statement is that if you’re using the internet, it’s probably not possible to completely remove Google’s influence because they provide so much of the underlying code and infrastructure. i stand by that. if you don’t agree, try to cut out Google completely, and see how successful you can be.
if you want to protect privacy, you have ways to do that without asking for iNat to stop using Google stuff.
but it’s not clear that the original post is concerned only with bad privacy practices. and if the desire is just getting rid of Google altogether for whatever reason(s), it’s going to be hard, and iNat has only a small lever to pull that still will not completely get rid of Google for most people, even if they find a a way to scrub it completely from the iNat platform.
Well, regardless of the OP’s motives, I would personally really like to not share data with Google when using iNaturalist. My goal isn’t to have a completely Google-free internet experience, which you’re probably correct to say is nearly impossible (sorry if I misread originally), but to minimize the leakage of my personal data to large tech companies. Since I don’t use social media and iNaturalist is the only platform I post things to (yes, I’m that boring), iNaturalist is probably my largest leak (I even use MapQuest on my phone believe it or not).
At the very least, it is a conversation that is well worth having. I don’t find the argument that you can’t do it 100% to be compelling, or even relevant–just because you can’t do something perfectly does not mean you can’t do it better.
Even if it isn’t possible to completely refrain from using anything from Google, it is worth periodically questioning that assumption, and it is worth periodically asking if the tools you are using are still (a) the best tools for that purpose, and (b) consistent with your values.
Even if you think it’s completely pointless and/or meaningless, lots of people are trying to get away from Google.
And, at least in my area, the quality of Google Maps is noticeably degrading. When I tried to put myself on the iNat ambassador map, I found I couldn’t use a local park, because Google Maps had randomly moved it 70 miles away. That’s just one example, maybe it’s a fluke, errors happen anywhere. But, it’s worth asking: Is Google Maps still the best in the business?
Edit to add: I remember when the selling point for gmail was that you had email powered by Google search (which meant you never had to delete anything, because you had infinite storage). Google search is no longer a selling point. At this point, I just assume maps will be go that way eventually.
it’s not clear to me that you have to share a ton of data with Google if you don’t want to. as far as I can tell, the iNaturalist website isn’t sharing your iNat account data with Google via Google Maps. so even if Google is keeping track of the IP from which you’re making requests for some reason, or even if Google Maps is storing some other sort of tracker, i don’t see how you can’t already protect yourself from that sort of tracking.
just take your standard privacy protections. and don’t use Android, don’t use Chromium, don’t use Google identity services, and don’t use a Google DNS, if you like. these are all things you already have control over to protect your privacy. getting rid of Google from iNaturalist doesn’t necessarily protect your privacy any better.
I agree. No one ever makes change by thinking it’s impossible. And google is only so big and seemingly indestructible because it keeps being used, with minimal challenge to its practices
I do have a Google account which I have to use on occasion for my job when someone wants to privately share a Google doc or Google spreadsheet or files in a Google Drive with me. I try to always access it using a private window in Firefox so that the cookies aren’t persistent, but sometimes I forget or I’m in a hurry and don’t bother. So sometimes (probably more often than I’d like to admit) there are google.com cookies set in my browser that are associated with my real name and contact info. For most users of the internet, that is probably a given. While those cookies are set in my browser, if I visit a site that loads Javascript from google.com, that Javascript can be used to record that Mary McParanoid (gleaned from my cookies) visited iNaturalist.com from Kampala, Uganda (gleaned from my IP) on July 27th.† Google now knows that I use iNaturalist. That may sound completely paranoid, but this is the sort of cross-site tracking that Meta does all the time using their embedded social media links and there is no reason to think that Google doesn’t do the same with Google Analytics and Google Script to improve their targeted advertising. What’s more, since I’m loading Google map tiles from my current location, Google theoretically also knows my exact location, but is unlikely to be actively associating it with my account. Regardless, a rogue Google employee or employee of a company they sell the data to could use any and all of that information in ways that are outside of my control and against my best interests. Again, that may sound paranoid, but these things actually happen and have real consequences. For a worst-case scenario, take Bassel Khartabil who was executed by the Syrian government for editing Wikipedia (which is why the Wikimedia Foundation won’t use Google Maps).
† Firefox’s same-origin restrictions are supposed to prevent this, but since the Javascript is making image requests to Google for map tiles, those requests will include the google.com cookies. This is a loophole that many tech companies exploit to work around efforts to block user tracking. If you’ve ever seen websites mysteriously requesting 1 pixel images in your network console, that’s why.
i don’t think Google necessarily even would care about cookies in this case. if your fear is that it will figure out where you are based on an IP, it already has your IP and can associate it with your Google identify as soon as you use a service like Google Drive. you don’t even have to visit iNaturalist later to reveal your IP.
i get that Google tracks you across the internet and you may not be applying best practices for privacy protection 100% of the time, but i’m not sure what new information your iNaturalist usage would provide that the rest of your internet use wouldn’t?
what exactly is the thing that Google did that led to this person’s execution? And how is that related to Wikipedia’s use of Google Maps? Even if Google, say, turned over information to the Syrian government about Khartabil’s internet usage – which I don’t see any evidence of – it’s not clear to me why Wikipedia would point to Google Maps as being the conduit for information that Google had on that user. It seems like maybe Wikipedia might have just decided that the things that Khartabil stood for were incompatible with the values represented by Google and so stopped using Google Maps because of values incompatability?
if you want to say that iNat shouldn’t use Google because of the values that Google represents, i have no qualms with that (other than that it may be impractical for the sort of thing that iNat does, since it’s much more GIS-focused than Wikipedia is), but if you’re going to say the problem is that Google is somehow getting a lot of private data about you from your iNaturalist usage, i think that argument is weak.
i don’t think Google necessarily even would care about cookies in this case. if your fear is that it will figure out where you are based on an IP, it already has your IP and can associate it with your Google identify as soon as you use a service like Google Drive. you don’t even have to visit iNaturalist later to reveal your IP.
Firefox (and some other privacy-focused browsers) have built-in VPNs that largely prevent that kind of tracking. I actually had inaturalist.org on the VPN whitelist until seeing this thread. Sadly, the whitelist is getting smaller and smaller every day :P
what exactly is the thing that Google did that led to this person’s execution?
His execution wasn’t directly related to anything about Google or Google Maps. But the Wikimedia Foundation knows that protecting the identity of its users can be a matter of life and death. So they delete all their server logs after 90 days, generally refuse most information requests from government agencies, and have decided to not load any external resources on their websites to protect user privacy. Granted, protecting the identity of iNaturalist users is unlikely to be a matter of life and death, but its just an example of why privacy on the internet is very important to some people. You’re probably right that iNaturalist’s use of Google doesn’t actually have much practical effect on user privacy, but I do think it has some effect and that it’s worth talking about.
[I’ve probably said more than my fair share at this point, so I’m going to shut up now.]
I unistalled all google-linked default applications on my phone and found alternatives outside Google appstore (I found iNat app on Aptoide server).
I left gmail for protonmail…
The same on my computer : I use Ubuntu…
I prefer sucking apps, doesn’t matter…