The deceptive PR behind Apple’s “expanded protections for children”

What part exactly do you think people are confused about?

Wait a second.

You’re telling me that you believe a low-wage worker reviewing the worst of the worst human depravity, is going to stand up on a soap box and defend another nameless and faceless denizen of the Earth, when the crux of the argument is basically this:

“Yeah I know the person tripped the safety threshold for CSAM, but these images aren’t that bad!”

It’s not reasonable to trust the human reviewer. They put themselves at risk by going against the automated system. I’d bet 95% of people in this circumstance would pass the buck to the FBI to make their determination, at which point “your” life is already ruined.

It’s good to know that if I use the “section” glyph in an otherwise completely false analysis born of extending my experience past where I’m competent, readers will quickly repeat whatever it is I said as factual and “quite irrefutable”. The power of one blog post is quite something. You’re the third person I’ve seen quote that very post and go “welp, sure is a smoking gun” despite it being completely, utterly, demonstrably false. It’s make believe. That entire blog post is so incorrect that it’s barely useful as toilet paper, friend.

If the author were correct Facebook and others would have been charged with felonies already. Verification happens in good faith and requires transmission despite the exact letter of the law. The people doing it regularly talk to NCMEC. There are evidentiary and chain of custody procedures to follow that also transmit the material. Guess we should charge computers with felonies!

It’s also fucking hysterical that the armchairs who didn’t know what CSAM stood for a week ago think that one of the most litigiously sensitive systems ever built by a corporation somehow missed criminal legal liability. You know, it’s pretty easy to overlook criminal liability when you’re building a system that is used to establish criminal liability. Totally passes the smell test. Irrefutable indeed.

You guys are off your rockers and should move on to another topic. Seriously. Every day this is discussed is another harsh reminder of (a) how few fucks the industry gives about abuse of children and (b) how everyone here digests blogs and considers themselves authoritative on horrors they’ve never once experienced. Every day this is argued on HN, particularly last night when someone said the privacy situation is “the actual abuse” and “much worse” than the rape of children, is another day I’m ashamed to have chosen this profession and work alongside you. This community welcomes the people who have built surveillance systems for every consumer activity imaginable and kids getting molested is where you draw the privacy line, huh? Can’t look for that? I’m genuinely out. Keep your industry. I’d rather manage a Taco Bell if this is the perspective of this industry, because brother, I’ve seen what they’re trying to tackle and I’m still in therapy.

There is a hypocrisy at the core of the “privacy” argument here that is fundamentally indicting not only this community, but everyone discussing this up to and including EFF. I’ve never been so disappointed in people who I used to look up to and think of as good, smart folks.

Source: I’ve built CSAM handling systems for a FAANG and written the policy for using it. The author has misinterpreted the very law he cites and overlooked two subparagraphs. But that isn’t what you want to hear.

Wait, what conspiracy am I saying is 100% true?

If your phone was listening to everything you do all the time then you'd need a lot of processing to analyze it on-device and exfiltrate the critical pieces of info (which would be pretty obvious when looking at CPU usage and battery life), or you'd be sending an insane amount of data off over the internet all the time.

I'm not saying it's technically impossible - I'm just saying that the ol "Facebook is listening to everything and that's why you get ads for something after you talk about it in real life" is almost certainly a myth with zero actual data to support it other than some anecdotes online.

You are incredibly naive.

Apple started out saying that they can't decrypt data from anyone's phone. They fought a lawsuit from the FBI over the San Bernadino terrorist phones. This is one of the reasons why I went all-in on Apple, because they were willing to fight the government over our privacy.

Now, years later, they don't encrypt iCloud backups because the FBI told them not to.

Google used to human review all copyright violations on Youtube. Fast forward a few years later, and all copyright violations are demonstrably shown to be approved and the content generator needs to prove that they didn't violate copyright. Look at the violations over white noice. Google doesn't even care anymore, they just let the copyright violations go through and affect the content creators with no review.

To believe that Apple employees will review CSAM-flagged photos 5 years from now is so incredibly naive, it's actually funny. You can bet they are working on AI that will handle this for them right now in Cupertino.

And then, it will be random chance whether or not we are flagged and labelled as pedophiles, or if a government wants to tag us as "problematic" and wants access to our phones because we are journalists and they want to see our anonymous sources.

It's naive to think that it won't go in this direction.

If you're a pedophile, after this announcement you will delete all the photos off your iPhone and never use it again. After the first few rounds of arrests and cleansing, it will be well knowing within the pedophile community not to use iPhones. And then the only ones who will be getting their photos scanned will be innocent people. So the entire feature doesn't make sense at all. It's a ruse.