• 6xpipe_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Apple Kills Its Plan to Scan Your Photos for CSAM

      That headline literally says they’re not doing that. It was a well-meaning initiative that they rightfully backed down on when called out.

      I am one of the first to typically assume malice or profit when a company does something, but I really think Apple was trying to do something good for society in a way that is otherwise as privacy-focused as they could be. They just didn’t stop to consider whether or not they should be proactive in legal matters, and when they got reamed by privacy advocates, they decided not to go forward with it.

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        Good on them for canceling those plans but they only did so because of the massive public outcry. They still intended to start scanning your photos and that is worrying.

        However I’m not denying that it’s probably still the most privacy focused phone you can get. For now.

        • kirklennon@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          They still intended to start scanning your photos and that is worrying.

          They wanted to scan photos stored in iCloud. Apple has an entirely legitimate interest in not storing CSAM on their servers. Instead of doing it like every other photo service does, which scans all of your photos on the server, they created a complex privacy-preserving method to do an initial scan on device as part of the upload process and, through the magic of math, these would only get matched as CSAM on the server if they were confident (one in a trillion false-positives) you were uploading literally dozens of CSAM images, at which point they’d then have a person verify to make absolutely certain, and then finally report your crime.

          The system would do the seemingly impossible of preserving the privacy of literally everybody except the people that everyone agrees don’t deserve it. If you didn’t upload a bunch of CSAM, Apple itself would legitimately never scan your images. The scan happened on device and the match happened in the cloud, and only if there were a enough matches to guarantee confidence. It’s honestly brilliant but people freaked out after a relentless FUD campaign, including from people and organizations who absolutely should know better.

        • monad@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Apple proposes change

          Users vote against it

          Apple doesn’t do change

          Nothing to see here folks

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I don’t quite see it like that myself. If you want to potray yourself as a user privacy focused company then why would you even suggest such feature? Even if their intentions are purely to just protect children with zero malicious future plans they still know it’s going to have bad optics and be widely controversial.

            • monad@programming.dev
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              they still know it’s going to have bad optics and be widely controversial

              How would they know that? It’s often hard to predict how users will react, sometimes your expectations are wrong.

        • dynamojoe@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          but they only did so because of the massive public outcry

          Well, shit. For once the voice of the people worked and you’re still bitching about it.

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            You’re right. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh and should give them some credit. After all they reversed the decision to switch to those shitty butterfly switches on the macbook keyboard too and brought back HDMI and SD card slot. Also ditched that stupid touch bar

    • murphys_lawyer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      i mean, that’s a pretty niche case and maybe your underage kid shouldn’t be sending nudes via imessage anyways.

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s a whole another discussion. It just one example anyways. My point still stands; this does not increase user privacy.

        • Nerdlinger@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          The child in that case is not the user (or at least not the owner). The user is the parent who configures the phone as they choose and loans it to the child. It’s no different than Apple allowing a business to configure a MacBook as they choose, including tools to monitor its usage, and then offering that computer to one of their employees. The owner of the device gets to choose the privacy settings, not necessarily the end user.