Apple’s Software Chief Explains ‘Misunderstood’ iPhone Child-Protection Features (Exclusive) | WSJ

If you watch the Joanna Stern interview with Craig Federighi[1] you’ll find plenty of nuance to contradict your comment. That doesn’t mean you should believe them or that there isn’t a real possibility of the system being abused (that’s partially addressed in the interview), but it also doesn’t mean there was no nuance or thought put into the feature or that it isn’t being misunderstood. All of those can be true at the same time. You can have a bad system that people disagree with for incorrect reasons. That matters: the effort Apple needs to spend fending off inaccurate criticism is effort not spent understanding and addressing the real issue. [1]: [this video]

Creating a novel on-device scanning mechanism and claiming that is somehow more privacy is a lie, and therefore shady. Using that novel on-device scanning capability to secretly report people to authorities, that's beyond shady. Claiming that the novel hashing algorithm is verifiable by third parties, but simultaneously suing any third parties that try to analyze the actual code running (without being subject to Apple NDA), is mega shady. Secretly reporting people to authorities based on unverifiable novel image hashing algorithms and only image "derivatives", whatever that means, that's ultra shady. Pretending that people are somehow "misunderstanding" if they are alarmed by this unprecedented, unverifiable scanning and secret snitching mechanism being run over their private photos, that's extra ultra mega shady, but typical of Apple. Look at this shitshow explanation. When have you ever seen Apple being so terrible at explaining a feature? None of this smells right: [this video]