Apple's New Child Safety Technology Might Harm More Kids Than It Helps

> Apple will, it says, use “on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit.” All photos sent or received by an Apple account held by someone under 18 will be scanned, and parental notifications will be sent if this account is linked to a designated parent account.

That's a very steep, very slippery slope. What's next? Will they start detecting drugs, alcohol, smoking, hanging out with the wrong crowd?

> When we are overzealous in declaring behavior “bad” or “dangerous”—even the sharing of swimsuit photos between teens—we blur young people’s ability to detect when something actually harmful is happening to them.

I think everyone in tech should understand the consequences of warning fatigue enough to know the author is making a pretty good point here. Is Apple's "AI" (aka pattern matching with a fancy name) going to be able to interpret context or intent? Definitely not IMO.

I can't imagine being a teenager these days. I'm thankful I grew up in the 90s when massive privacy violations by big tech weren't a thing.

Why is it Apple's business what pictures kids are taking on their phones and sending to each other? Does Apple have some kind of massive child predator problem on their platforms that they aren't telling us about that would warrant these types of gargantuan privacy violations? If so, tell us about it. If not, fuck off IMO.

"In fact, even by having this feature, we are teaching young people that they do not have a right to privacy."

Interesting take that I haven't seen in the discussion. Teaching kids about privacy and anti-surveillance sounds interesting countermeasure. EFF for example?

> LGBTQ youth... are more likely to send explicit images like those Apple seeks to detect and report, in part because of the lack of availability of sexuality education.

This is nonsense; a neutral discussion in school about intercourse (straight or gay) isn't going to cause young adults to avoid expressing their sexual urges. If anything it will make them more likely to express such urges, since the neutral discussion in class will make the topic seem more broachable.

Is having perfect privacy worth turning a blind eye to the organized mass rape of children? That’s the choice, no exaggeration.

Considering there’s nearly 8 billion alive, there must be a whole lot of activity at this exact moment. I wonder what the current number of ‘victims in progress’ is. Has to be at least 25,000. Visualize that. Quite the price to pay.