Many of us have had more than enough of you and your comments. Unfortunately you are outnumbered.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Remains Committed to Launching New Child Safety Features Later This Year
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I am sorry to say but you are impossible to read after a point. I really wish that you are working under Apple's payroll so you're just doing your job under those extremely bad conditions for Apple.. Wish you luck...
I admit, I haven't read through all 27 pages of comments, but what seems to be missing is that Apple is likely just ahead of the curve on this one. Again, I can't speak for the rest of the world, and Apple isn't implementing this world wide, but I think Google, Amazon, and Facebook—which already have far more invasive access to most users personal data—are going to have to do something similar soon. It may be worse for consumer privacy because they won't be able to guarantee "on device" capabilities so more of the processing (and your data) will move to the cloud. The biggest difference is that they won't be as transparent about it.
There seems to be a growing consensus among US politicians that the existing legal immunity for internet platforms needs to be curbed. The two parties disagree what that looks like when it comes to news and politics but child porn is that rare common ground they both agree on and can score a "win" by legislating against.
I'm pointing this out not to defend the position, just to illustrate that this could a classic "skate to where the puck will be" move for Apple.
There seems to be a growing consensus among US politicians that the existing legal immunity for internet platforms needs to be curbed. The two parties disagree what that looks like when it comes to news and politics but child porn is that rare common ground they both agree on and can score a "win" by legislating against.
I'm pointing this out not to defend the position, just to illustrate that this could a classic "skate to where the puck will be" move for Apple.
Giving up privacy for security, is it really a worthy tradeoff? Especially when the ones committing these crimes will just bypass this feature in numerous ways, nice of Apple to tell them beforehand so they flee and the only people left affected are the average users and a few dense criminals.
The technical aspect of how it works is not really important, what is important is the framework it plants for further use by just planting a new set of data to scan for.
The technical aspect of how it works is not really important, what is important is the framework it plants for further use by just planting a new set of data to scan for.
I think that eventually, you and many other people will find that Apple’s implementation will be both more private and more secure. Kinda like the M1 chip. Users will be able to enjoy the best of both worlds, but it will require you to let go of existing assumptions as you know it.
I usually write in this forum very few times as I don't have the time like most of us. This thread was an exception. There is a reason there are 27 pages of comments this time - it takes time and energy to read. But I am afraid to say that you maybe surprised if you go through the comments. If you are open to the fact that Apple can actually commit mistakes (many users here will never admit to that) you may even change your opinion ! 😃
I think that eventually many people will not find apple's implementation more private and more secure. Many of us bought devices under false advertising (what happens on your iphone stays in your iphone etc etc etc) .. if Apple goes Google's way, many of us would rather choose Google instead that offers services that are light of years ahead.
Is there anything that worries you? So many experts in the field raised their concerns. You are assuming that once again apple is nailing it but are you willing to assume they are making a huge mistake this time?
I remember the time where you were defending, like many people here, apple's keyboards - I was following the forum because I had many problems with my keyboards back then and some users here were considering us the "crazy" ones. Even at that time, it was just impossible to even raise our concerns without taking the permission by starting our comments by saying: Don't get me wrong but I love Apple..
I am also wondering. Have you ever posted one single post here in the forum where you had something negative or even neutral to stay about Apple? Most users will say , good bad and neutral things.. I am fascinated that there are users that will support Apple almighty for years without expressing a single concern. Ever!
Last edited:
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: There are two different processes here. iOS 15 (on capable devices) scans every image to detect content (funny how no one freaked out when it was identifying flowers or text). If you are a child under 13 years of age, and your parents are opted-in to parental controls, if iOS detects explicit content it will warn you and your parents. If you are not a child under 13 or the parent of a child under 13 you can't opt-in or out. I just doesn't apply to you.
If you are using iCloud Photos, which is currently and always was unencrypted, as part of the upload process Apple is comparing the 'hash' or digital fingerprint of each image to a known database of kiddie porn. These fingerprints are not new or unique to Apple. This is decades old stuff that happens in the background usually to verify a file got uploaded properly or already exists on a server.
The only novel thing is that Apple is comparing them to a database and flagging accounts that cross a threshold of matches. This is not new tech. It is a change in policy. The proactive policing is a little unnerving but if you're sharing/saving kiddie porn on iCloud it was always open to a police search. What is reassuring is that Apple's being very open about this where most tech companies just bury this stuff in updated user agreements.
Don't like it? Then use one of these, or turn off iCloud.
Last week, Apple previewed new child safety features that it said will be coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac with software updates later this year. The company said the features will be available in the U.S. only at launch.
A refresher on Apple's new child safety features from our previous coverage:Since announcing the plans last Thursday, Apple has received some pointed criticism, ranging from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden claiming that Apple is "rolling out mass surveillance" to the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation claiming that the new child safety features will create a "backdoor" into the company's platforms.
"All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children's, but anyone's accounts," cowrote the EFF's India McKinney and Erica Portnoy. "That's not a slippery slope; that's a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change."
The concerns extend to the general public, with over 7,000 individuals having signed an open letter against Apple's so-called "privacy-invasive content scanning technology" that calls for the company to abandon its planned child safety features.
At this point in time, it does not appear that any negative feedback has led Apple to reconsider its plans. We confirmed with Apple today that the company has not made any changes as it relates to the timing of the new child safety features becoming available — that is, later this year in updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey. With the features not expected to launch for several weeks to months, though, the plans could still change.
Apple sticking to its plans will please several advocates, including Julie Cordua, CEO of the international anti-human trafficking organization Thorn.
"The commitment from Apple to deploy technology solutions that balance the need for privacy with digital safety for children brings us a step closer to justice for survivors whose most traumatic moments are disseminated online," said Cordua.
"We support the continued evolution of Apple's approach to child online safety," said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. "Given the challenges parents face in protecting their kids online, it is imperative that tech companies continuously iterate and improve their safety tools to respond to new risks and actual harms."
Article Link: Apple Remains Committed to Launching New Child Safety Features Later This Year
I suppose my support of Apple stems from their products having worked very well for me. Call it luck, call it me being Apple's target market, maybe the nature of my lifestyle and my career just makes me a better fit for Apple's design-led product culture. I don't know what to call it, but I really do like their products, even if perhaps it has tunnel-visioned me into not really bothering to consider alternative brands.
I guess if there was one gripe, it's that I have had quite a number of trips down to the Apple store in the past few years to have some of my products serviced (suggesting that perhaps they are not as durable as the brand may otherwise have implied), but AppleCare has come through for me and Apple has replaced most of the products that I have had problems with.
In the same vein, I have somehow managed to stay clear of some of Apple's more problematic product releases. For example, the HomePod was never made available in my country, while I skipped the entire generation of butterfly keyboard laptops because I was content using my iPad Pro in tandem with my iMac. I am currently using an iPhone 8+, which still runs the lastest version of iOS, and still benefiting from Touch ID at a time where we all have to wear face masks. You will probably have heard me gushing about how I enjoy using my iPad Pro to teach in the classroom.
So if I sound like a fanboy, I suppose I am, because of the great experience I have gotten from my apple products in the past decade.
Apologies if I have made you feel uncomfortable or intimidated in any way. I suppose it's the nature of these forums that we tend to take more assertive or adversarial tones, or perhaps it's something about the nature of these discussions which brings out that argumentative side in me.I remember the time where you were defending, like many people here, apple's keyboards - I was following the forum because I had many problems with my keyboards back then and some users here were considering us the "crazy" ones. Even at that time, it was just impossible to even raise our concerns without taking the permission by starting our comments by saying: Don't get me wrong but I love Apple..
It is possible, and perhaps for better and for worse, I find I tend to give Apple the benefit of a doubt (and perhaps overwhelmingly so at times).
If I were to pinpoint how this came to be so, I will say that somewhere along the line here at Macrumours, my attitude was borne out of a frustration of how too many people seemed fixated on paper specs in a vacuum, and not enough on the end experience. People working for tech blogs cover an industry, and then they attempt to draw a link to Apple from time to time. I feel this tends to lead to error and inaccurate analysis, because you are comparing Apple too much to other companies, and you are not allowing Apple’s unique attributes to speak for themselves or recognise how Apple is able to set themselves apart from the competition.
It also doesn't help that our media landscape is increasingly resorting to FUD (fear, uncertainly, doubt) in a bid to draw in the views and the clicks, and I find that apart from politics, Apple is also a very popular punching bag because it is such a polarising company, precisely because it does so many things so differently from the rest of the competition. Look at the numerous threads on CSAM scanning on Macrumours, look at how many people have responded, and how many of them continue to contain misinformation that has flat out been debunked by Apple, and still this persists.
Rather, the best way (I feel) of covering Apple is to begin with Apple. You have to focus with Apple, and then you move outwards. You start with Apple, and then you analyse the industry that Apple operates in. Instead, what I see a lot of people still do today is that they just treat Apple as any other company. But Apple does a lot of things differently, and if all you are doing is simply comparing Apple to everyone else and then go “Hey, Apple isn’t following what everyone else is doing, so I don’t think whatever Apple is doing is going to work”, I think they go down the wrong path.
Techcrunch has also published an interview today that further addresses these concerns. For example, there's is:
and this:
Interview: Apple’s head of Privacy details child abuse detection and Messages safety features | TechCrunch
Last week, Apple announced a series of new features targeted at child safety on its devices. Though not live yet, the features will arrive later this year
techcrunch.com
I don't see how what Apple is doing is anything like Google at all. Google just scans anything and everything you upload. Apple has designed a way of scanning your device in a non-invasive manner as possible, and their "scanning" is not even scanning in the conventional sense of the word.
I just feel that people have become so jaded and so numb to companies like Facebook and Google operating in a certain way and assuming that privacy is somehow an automatic casualty that they cannot envision how it can be possible for another company (like Apple) to completely upend this status quo and give us the best of both worlds.
I get it. It can be unsettling to know that Apple essentially has the capability to scan whatever they want on your device and a lot of that uncertainty boils down to us basically having to "trust" that Apple will not abuse this power.
Well, I'm up for a new phone this year and also was waiting on the M2 Macbooks. The keyboard on my 2018 MBP has turned into pure unreliable garbage compared to the 2012 it replaced, so I'm already pretty irritated. Just paid $1500 for an iPad Pro/keyboard in September. Guess it's time to review the path forward now that 1984 has finally made its way to Apple.
Even for children below the age of 13 I find it odd when parents see the need to monitor their children in such a way, this might be a cultural difference.
But it leaves the question, how Apple checks the age of the children. Who prevents parents from older children to enter a false age to be able to monitor their older children?
@dialogos I decided to break up my response into 2 posts because I felt it was getting too long, and I felt that this following point is crucial enough that I don't want it to be buried at the bottom of a long-enough post as is.
You are not the first person to challenge me in this area, and I have had the time to think about this point for quite some time now, and I believe in a nutshell, the entire argument can ultimately be summed up with one word - trust.
We Apple users buy Apple gear because we trust Apple, and I think that this is one of the really important aspects of Apple that people really don't understand. That Apple really goes the distance in building trust relationships with their customers.
This doesn't mean that Apple is perfect or beyond reproach. Far from it, but Apple has been very good in the areas that I do care about, while I find I can still tolerate the areas in which they are weak in. Their relatively few competitors are the inverse, and I think you will find that while a lot of Apple users may struggle to articulate this point, it will nevertheless come out along this line if you poke them the right way.
It's the same as how people connect with their babysitter or hairdresser. I don't evaluate them solely on objective metrics. Instead, we connect based on how well we communicate, whether we trust them to be truthful and fair with us, how well we approach a given problem, and so on. That doesn't mean I am a cultist to the 40-year-old down the street who cuts my hair out of her apartment; it just means that my mom and I trust her and have built a rapport with her, and that's about 90% of what we're buying as part of that service.
To sum it all up, Apple users buy trust, not specs.
And yes, I still trust Apple at the end of the day.
You are not the first person to challenge me in this area, and I have had the time to think about this point for quite some time now, and I believe in a nutshell, the entire argument can ultimately be summed up with one word - trust.
We Apple users buy Apple gear because we trust Apple, and I think that this is one of the really important aspects of Apple that people really don't understand. That Apple really goes the distance in building trust relationships with their customers.
This doesn't mean that Apple is perfect or beyond reproach. Far from it, but Apple has been very good in the areas that I do care about, while I find I can still tolerate the areas in which they are weak in. Their relatively few competitors are the inverse, and I think you will find that while a lot of Apple users may struggle to articulate this point, it will nevertheless come out along this line if you poke them the right way.
It's the same as how people connect with their babysitter or hairdresser. I don't evaluate them solely on objective metrics. Instead, we connect based on how well we communicate, whether we trust them to be truthful and fair with us, how well we approach a given problem, and so on. That doesn't mean I am a cultist to the 40-year-old down the street who cuts my hair out of her apartment; it just means that my mom and I trust her and have built a rapport with her, and that's about 90% of what we're buying as part of that service.
To sum it all up, Apple users buy trust, not specs.
And yes, I still trust Apple at the end of the day.
I think you explained it very well, I was about to comment something along the same lines. Just to add to that;
The trust vs distrust is what most PRSI (RIP) topics boil down to. And it’s impossible to win that argument. It shouldn’t come to trying to win, but that’s how it works on forums. I’ve tried my fair share. I regret that though.
It’s very easy to call people who trust naive or to think of people who distrust as conspiracy thinkers. What’s much harder to see is how in each of the two opinions there’s some truth.
Anyway, back to discussion 😋
I suppose my support of Apple stems from their products having worked very well for me. Call it luck, call it me being Apple's target market, maybe the nature of my lifestyle and my career just makes me a better fit for Apple's design-led product culture. I don't know what to call it, but I really do like their products, even if perhaps it has tunnel-visioned me into not really bothering to consider alternative brands.
I guess if there was one gripe, it's that I have had quite a number of trips down to the Apple store in the past few years to have some of my products serviced (suggesting that perhaps they are not as durable as the brand may otherwise have implied), but AppleCare has come through for me and Apple has replaced most of the products that I have had problems with.
In the same vein, I have somehow managed to stay clear of some of Apple's more problematic product releases. For example, the HomePod was never made available in my country, while I skipped the entire generation of butterfly keyboard laptops because I was content using my iPad Pro in tandem with my iMac. I am currently using an iPhone 8+, which still runs the lastest version of iOS, and still benefiting from Touch ID at a time where we all have to wear face masks. You will probably have heard me gushing about how I enjoy using my iPad Pro to teach in the classroom.
So if I sound like a fanboy, I suppose I am, because of the great experience I have gotten from my apple products in the past decade.
Apologies if I have made you feel uncomfortable or intimidated in any way. I suppose it's the nature of these forums that we tend to take more assertive or adversarial tones, or perhaps it's something about the nature of these discussions which brings out that argumentative side in me.
.....
First of all thanks for taking the time to write a long post. Unfortunately I don't have the time to reply to all of your points.
I have no problem at all with someone being a fan! I personally believe you were kinda lucky with your products. I had many issues with Apple products and mostly services in the past but I am a consumerist and I like buying products that I like - and so far I chose apple instead of the competition , even when I knew that the competition offers better services at least.
The problem in the forum starts when people here are not open and willing to accept that some users face real problems. Or they have real concerns. For example the problems with the keyboards which personally cost me money, time and mostly frustration. Or serious problems when my ipad automatically made an update a very important piece of medical software stopped working. (once again it was the user's fault or the company's fault) Or problems like buying a brand new iphone where apple automatically had icloud photo stream ON without asking permission and the end user should just know it.. Some of us have medical documents that simply shouldnt be uploaded to the cloud.. Once again it was the user's mistake.
As long as loyal apple fans are deflecting the problem each time it is mentioned by someone, they are unwillingly create the impression (to themselves) that everything is just fine. How will you bring to your mind all those problems that have being mentioned about Apple all those years if each time you were defending it? If we are open to even listen to another opinion, I strongly believe that constructive criticism will benefit all of us..especially those of us who are consumers and we want to make the best purchase and to have a place to seek support when we face a problem without being afraid to even open our mouths.
I am extremely skeptical with the route Apple is taking those days. I am reading what Apple said but I can't forget all the commercials , all the propaganda, and all the criticism that Apple gets from many researchers who are definitely more educated than me on this topic.
We do not have all the details behind the scenes but I feel that on this topic instead of supporting Apple we should really be critical and skeptical. We will only benefit from it
Apple claims a 1 in 1 trillion chance per account per year. Apple provides no details on how they came up with this number, so we would have to trust them on this. As Apple does not trust us, there is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. With a neat impressive number like that, there is a distinct possibility that the calculation was done very generously with the goal of reaching that number, or it is an outright lie. The burden of proof is on Apple, and without this proof the number should not be accepted as a convincing argument.
Note that even if we were to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume that the calculation was honest, the number itself would still be of dubious value to an individual. It is a chance per account, and accounts can differ greatly in how many pictures they store and in what these pictures show. As we only get a single chance value, this must be something that holds for an "average account." How close is my account to an average account, how close is yours? We don't know, and Apple won't tell.
Now you're just trolling. I agree with you on this, and I told her as such. But I simply found her perspective as someone on the "front lines" interesting, as I clearly stated in my comment. And while it's not Apple's roll to eradicate this stuff from the face of the earth, they sure are patting themselves on the back about the whole thing, within that context.
You've shown, once again, your inability to read and respond to context in spite of your constant criticism of others for the same thing. Or rather, you pick and choose the context that is convenient for you in the moment. Sure, maybe it's because you've been on these forums exhaustively trying to downplay the irrational naysayers. But if you're not able to differentiate any more, maybe it's time to take a break.
I would argue your entire rhetoric falls flat on its face here. The general Apple user, i.e “we”, does not buy Apple gear because of trust (from a privacy sense). I know you usually do some mental gymnastics with words, but I would argue trust ranks fairly low compared to the other reasons people buy Apple products.
Just why do you even think this is relevant to the discussion? Spotlight is for our benefit and doesn't report in to the government if it finds something it thinks is objectionable. And fwiw, I don't use spotlight either, but I don't bother disabling it either, I simply don't care it's there as it's not useful to me.
I've bolded what I'm responding to...
Good point. The reason for staying within the Apple ecosystem for many in spite of these moves by Apple boil down to three...
1) 10+ years of indoctrination that "Google is evil". This is so ingrained in people that they believe that Android is a free and unfettered pipeline of personal information to every nefarious corner of the internet. Even if Apple ends up where Google currently is, they are still not Google and so... Apple is better. (The same happened with Microsoft)
2) They don't mind these things when Apple does them. This is the flipside of #1. "Apple has a conscience" is similarly ingrained in people's minds. This results in a default assumption of positive motives when Apple does a thing. Even if that action is the same as what other companies do, the fact that it is Apple causes a different response.
3) A heavy investment in the Apple ecosystem. This has been a longtime in the making. Computers, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, speakers, TV set-top boxes, digital media, software, and more. There are many who are so financially locked-in to Apple's ecosystem that it is prohibitive for them to get out of it.
Anyone wanting to exit Appleland is either going to take a financial hit as they have to wholesale replace those Apple products and services with alternatives (which is quick but expensive), or slowly phase out and replace products with alternatives as they need to be replaced (much less expensive, but takes much more time).
I was never fully invested in the ecosystem (on a scale of 1 to 10, I was a 5) and even at that it has taken me 6 years to be in a position to be fully detached from the ecosystem. I still use own and use Apple products, but they can all now be easily replaced with a non-Apple alternative with minimal interruption.
I can't imagine what it would be like for people who are very to highly invested in the ecosystem who then want to leave. I suspect that Apple CAN imagine that, and THAT is why they're making these moves now. Great for them, not so for those who want to get out.
(edit: fixed typo.)
Last edited:
Nope. It wouldn't bother me, and in fact, I think they will have to anyway, even with the backdoor in iOS now -- as iOS isn't the only way to store things in iCloud, any old browser can do it. And guess what, iCloud is Apple's, it's public, and they pay for the scanning -- it would be more efficient power-wise as well.