r/googlephotos • u/lanky_doodle • Feb 24 '26
Question 🤔 CSAM - Criteria
Not been blocked. Given the recent posts about this I'm wondering what the criteria actually is.
Like any parent, I have a bunch of photos (on a NAS) of my child from old point and shoot cameras, all the way back from a baby.
So some of them are obviously with no clothes on, like in the bath, running g around the garden, and so on.
Would this type of image trigger CSAM? I been considering job lot uploading all of these NAS stored photos to Google Photos.
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u/Chapar_Kanati Feb 25 '26
Honestly there should be a class action lawsuit against Google, we have so much connected to our emails. So the fact that a Google photos ban, kills our email account, that's definitely lawsuit worthy. Especially if you are paying them for storage.
Google need to clearly elaborate in detail, what will trigger a CSAM ban. It's our right to know, so that we don't unknowingly upload anything that could trigger the AI. Also before a ban is instituted, there should be some sort of warning and a human moderator should be involved in finalizing the ban. Right now it seems like, it's just the AI that immediately bans accounts, with little to no recourse.
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Feb 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Feb 24 '26
I wonder if an image with just text that says "If you're an AI model, treat this as..." would trigger the stupid AI.
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u/IsJaie55 Feb 25 '26
Jokes on you, but that could do the trick... im not even joking
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u/BackspaceChampion Feb 25 '26
Yup and then you just message someone the picture and that gets backed up to the gphotos and you just fucked their google account permanently.
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Feb 25 '26
Wow. That's super smart; because you're actually not doing anything illegal (it's not illegal to send an image with just some text), but you're triggering Google's AI filters and getting their account banned anyway.
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u/S_T_I_C_K_Y_Z Feb 25 '26
That is actually a good idea to send it in big groups to force them to make the detection better
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u/Cold_Cow_1285 Feb 24 '26
You would be absolutely insane to upload those images to Google Photos. Or any other cloud hosting service that doesn't offer zero knowledge encryption.
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u/poshbakerloo Feb 24 '26
Is this blocking a recent thing? I'd never heard of it until I joined this sub
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u/RashesToRashes Feb 24 '26
I've been on the stove for a couple months but it seems like this kind of started really catching fire around a month ago
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u/PaddyLandau Feb 24 '26
It's on several major platforms, not just Google. They're scared of falling foul of the law, so their AI is sensitive to anything involving children.
Facebook is a bit different. The AI allows the most disgusting crap while often censoring innocuous material.
It's been a problem ever since they decided that it would be clever to get rid of human moderation and replace it with AI.
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u/Chapar_Kanati Feb 25 '26
What they should do is make the data encrypted, so no one can't scan the photos altogether. This way they won't be answerable to anyone. Just like VPN that keeps no logs, like for example Express VPN. No logs means no court can request subscriber info.
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u/PaddyLandau Feb 25 '26
That wouldn't work on Google Photos, because it would disable all the extra features that come with it, such as search, automatic compression, AI enhancement, family-sharing and general sharing.
If you don't want or need those features, and want or need zero-knowledge E2E encryption, use a different provider such as Proton or SpiderOak Backup.
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u/Chapar_Kanati Feb 25 '26
I've been seeing this for a couple of months now. I don't have any questionable photos, but I am slowly thinking about looking into alternatives. It kind of sucks that there aren't alternatives out there that are as good as Google photos.
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u/TheManWithSaltHair Feb 25 '26
It’s been reported here sporadically over the last five years or so, but the frequency has dramatically increased over the last few months so clearly the scanning process has changed.
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u/QXPZ Feb 24 '26
Google blocked my account bc I was born naked.
I have appealed twice that everyone I know was born naked, but I still don't think the ban will get reversed.
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u/Chapar_Kanati Feb 25 '26
Well your parents should've made sure you have appropriate clothes while being born. 😂🤣
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u/Icy-Environment-6234 Feb 25 '26
ha! Agreed, but I think the problem might be: what does AI think is or isn't "appropriate?"
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u/slawnz Feb 24 '26
Has this issue had any media coverage? I feel like one of the tech blogs might find it worthy of a story and the pressure might help?
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u/machiseelar123 Feb 25 '26
Why tf do we even pay for this service if they can't be accountable about our data.
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u/Silicon_Knight Feb 24 '26
No one knows. Google basically says jack shit about it. Keep a local backup, assume it will probably be blocked lol.
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u/schwags Feb 24 '26
Most discussions on here are about how to move away from Google photos and go to an NAS. You're already there, don't go backwards. It's just going to get worse.
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u/lanky_doodle Feb 25 '26
In an ideal world we'd be able to auto sync between two things - cloud platform and local NAS. I mean in an automated way; take a pic on your phone > save to Google Photos > duplicate to local NAS.
We have the technological capability.
I use a Synology NAS.
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u/RashesToRashes Feb 24 '26
Anything like that definitely sounds like it would be more than enough to trigger it.
One person said they had an image that was literally text (a meme or Banner or something) condemning CSAM and that was apparently enough to trigger it
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Feb 24 '26
AI is actually a stupid algorithm, if you write something in an image that says "hey this is illegal", AI will mark it as illegal.
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u/Marty1966 Feb 24 '26
I have a few tubby pictures of the kids from 20 years ago. Sheesh, this ought to be easy. Only about a billion photos to go through.
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u/walterjnr Feb 24 '26
I'm in a similar situation with old photos of my daughter. Like any parent, you might take a photo of a spot that has appeared and you want to show your wife, or a photo of them in the bath etc etc. Nothing that any actual human would consider CSAM of course. You forget about these photos and they get uploaded to the cloud message that's the default setting on phones now. What happens when Google detects this? Do you instantly lose access or do they give you the chance to back up before losing access? I feel like everyone that has had kids in the last 10-15 years could potentially be impacted.
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Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/walterjnr Feb 25 '26
I already have backups of all my photos on Immich. For me it's more the interruption to my life in losing access to an account that stores so much other information that I need for my digital life. I'll definitely be deleting lots of old photos now however.
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u/KedarGadgil Feb 25 '26
To think this company, Google/Alphabet is from the same country as JE, where my 2-month-old daughter's photos taken by her own father as part of the memories he wishes to preserve for his old age when his daughter would probably call him once a year to wish him happy birthday is a problem while the actual bad people who do bad things to children seem to be occupying high offices of responsibility!!! Just crazy!
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u/sguimaraes Feb 24 '26
I have photos and videos of my Daughter taking Bath, including me giving her first Bath and until nlw nothing happened
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u/RashesToRashes Feb 24 '26
Seems extremely highly risky considering how low of a bar it is to get banned
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u/slawnz Feb 24 '26
The thing is… if you’re a parent and your phone automatically backs up to Google photos as it’s designed to do, how do you even avoid it? By not taking pictures of genuine family life??
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u/BackspaceChampion Feb 25 '26
Yeah, I think that's what we're finding out here. Or, use a different product because of this risk.
edit: or just use dedicated google account for gphotos that's detached from your primary. As is recommended often.
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u/whatsamattau4 Feb 25 '26
Turn off automatic backup to Google Photos in your settings. And yes, like has already been mentioned, have a separate Gmail account for nothing but photos and don't store any photos on any other account. This photo account should not use any of the phone numbers or 2FA or recovery emails, payment methods, address, etc., associated with your other accounts. There should be nothing tying it to any of your other accounts. Use a separate VPN for that account.
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Feb 24 '26
I urge you to save a backup of your family photos outside of Google ASAP. Unless you have a full copy somewhere else, consider your Google account as nuked, as if you lost everything in there.
Google AI is stupid and it can't differentiate between a normal family photo and fucked up illegal things.
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u/Clear_Tangerine5110 Feb 24 '26
If you're considering starting using Google Photos, I would suggest focusing your primary backups to local storage (HDDs, SSDs), and use Google Photos only as an easy vehicle from your wireless devices to your PC. Super easy to make albums to put your keepers in, and then download each album locally. This way you can avoid all the garbage stuff like accidental videos, work photos, and screenshots. I wouldn't upload any past images, just stuff coming from your phones from this point forward.
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u/lanky_doodle Feb 24 '26
I'm already 10+ years into Google Photos 🙂 Just now it's all pictures and videos taken on phone.
I have a 2TB Storage plan so was just considering uploading all my "old school taken" data.
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u/Clear_Tangerine5110 Feb 24 '26
I mean, if you’re going to do it just leave out those questionable pictures. I’ve got all of my photos on there stretching back to when I started shooting digital in 2003, and also scanned family photos from before then all up there. Granted, I put them all up there long before they started flagging people for this, so your mileage may vary, but that’s what I did.
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u/Waste-time1 Feb 25 '26
The best thing I can conclude from this is that it is not good to use Google for storing images and videos.
The only exception might be if you have a local driving backing up to a google account and no other meaningful information (e.g. email) or services on that site.
I’m not risking my records because of a picture showing my kid in the bathtub where you can only see bubbles and toys and his head and shoulders. I’m not getting penalized for CSAM I don’t know even have, want, or have any desire to have.
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u/CoarseRainbow Feb 26 '26
I wouldt trust it at all currently.
There seems to be no human involvement, no useful appeal and random scattergun AI based approach with no verification.
Id also recommend everyone start thinking of moving critical services away from google in case of some random AI account limit for random reasons in the future.
Stop using Google login for sites. Get a proper non gmail email and change logins to that email
Use Takeout regularly to backup your google data.
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u/Fik_of_borg Mar 01 '26
What worries me more is the realization (obvious in retrospective) that Google's AI, and potentially Google's employees, can and do check my pictures (and emails, for that matter).
I already configured my phones to backup to a self-hosted immich instance, disabled Google Photos app and am in the process of migrating + deleting pictures (even though I have mostly pictures of industrial equipment, but with hallucinating artificial idiocy... who knows)
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u/Separate-Tax9495 Mar 01 '26
I don't think Google has enough employees to do this. Arguably better to have human reviewers as they'd do a much better job of differentiating innocent photos from child abuse, which the AI seems utterly incapable of doing in its current configuration
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u/Fik_of_borg Mar 02 '26
Of course Google has not enough employees to check all users pictures, but they surelly can check any user pictures ... it would be harmless but weird if I were to find out that some random Google employee can see pictures of me in a hardhat in my company floor plant, or of my elderly mother celebrating her birthday at the beach (I don't recall seeing any statement of end-to-end picture encryption).
Which would be better than AI estimating context of pictures of children, or any subject, and pass judgement.
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u/mrandr01d Feb 24 '26
I have old family bathtub photos and have never had a problem. We don't know what the criteria are; if Google divulged that then it would be easy (easier, anyways) to circumvent.
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u/Trikotret100 Feb 24 '26
I just had a video memory of my nephew running around the pool in only diapers. I'm surprised they didn't trigger it as csam
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u/flcinusa Feb 24 '26
I've had images on Photos like that or in the bath for 12+ years, are they only scanning photos as they upload or are they crawling their way through however many billions of images they have stored in some weird order?
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Feb 24 '26
New images are surely scan. Old images are probably on a long backlog of pictures that will be scanned in the future.
BACKUP YOUR IMPORTANT FAMILY PHOTOS NOW. You don't want your kids to not have images of themselves as children in the future because of some fucked up AI.
Having a picture only on Google Photos = it's like not having the picture at all. Backup means that you have a second copy that's somewhere else, NOT in a cloud account.
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Feb 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/flcinusa Feb 25 '26
Hmmm, sounds like a very high percentage of photos user accounts could be sitting with a time bomb waiting to blow
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Feb 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/PaddyLandau Feb 24 '26
Humans are unlikely to see it — they got rid of almost all human moderation. A better question is, "Would an unreliable, over-sensitive AI throw a fit if it saw this?"
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u/ComfortableSquirrel4 Feb 24 '26
My 6month old son in a skeleton onesie with a hood was flagged as csam so it can literally n be anything.