• 6xpipe_@lemmy.world
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    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
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      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
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        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
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        1 year ago

        Apple proposes change

        Users vote against it

        Apple doesn’t do change

        Nothing to see here folks

        • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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          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
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            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
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        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
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          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