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Comment by retskrad | Hacker News Reader

This must be the biggest PR blunder the last 20 years. I haven’t seen a tech company undermine their brand like this before.

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It's a blunder within the tech community, but how are common people viewing it?

I haven't talked to anyone about this within my social circle so maybe someone who has can chime in. I would suspect there would be a lot of "wait so you're against catching child abusers?"

I see no blowback in mainstream media in NL.

Perhaps not a blowback, but NOS has been good to show both sides of the argument pretty well. Every article so far has shown a balanced, with critical notes added. It's more than I expected from them. It's just one outlet though - I have no clue about the other outlets in NL.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2393312-apple-benadrukt-dat-nieuwe-fu...

https://nos.nl/artikel/2392763-apple-wil-iphones-in-vs-scann...

https://nos.nl/artikel/2392894-apple-wil-iphones-scannen-op-...

No blowback here in US media either, but our mainstream sources have been buddying up to all of our little authoritarians especially as it pertains to COVID, so running a story about your rights being infringed upon wouldn't jive with the rest of their recent messaging.

Of course not. Child Pr0N today, "hate speech" tomorrow.

For media, hate speech is anything that deviates from the propaganda of the day.

I'm amazed at how many people don't see the pattern, especially in our post 9/11 world. This stuff never stays contained to it's original purpose - it ALWAYS expands.

The only way to control it is not let it get established in the first place :p

Apple is learning their lesson about announcing these changes publicly. In the future they're likely to just roll out invasive features quietly behind their users' backs, like the rest of big tech does.

This is how Google operates. "We've updated our privacy policy to give you more control over how your data is used". And then it sounds like they are introducing privacy, when in fact they are taking it away, and you're lucky if the option they've given you restores the prior behavior. These privacy policies are written by lawyers and are a masterclass in simultaneously being vague as hell while being completely defensible in court and also as broad as possible. They go right up to the edge of the law on what they can do with your data and then fall back on "we don't sell your data to other companies". That's technically true. They just buy the other companies or start competing with them and hide it all behind "huminah huminah make our products better". The updates even sound completely innocent and unless you can intuit the technical architecture behind the product, you have no chance of really understanding what this clause really means for your privacy. By design.

Having read the actual privacy design docs behind some of these products....well, I'll just stop there.

> This is how Google operates.

Well, even though they don't hide the fact that they scan not just your photos but also all other content, they don't report what they learned to the police on their own accord - the police needs to explicitly ask for it.

Come to think of it, why to stop at child porn? Are photos of rape and murder less reprehensible (and if so, by who's morality)? If you follow this logic, Apple should have an army of people analyzing terrible images and in the end needing psychological help.

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