Hacker News Reader

Comment by rustybolt | Hacker News Reader

> an Apple employee will then look at your (flagged) pictures.

This means that there will be people paid to look at child pornography and probably a lot of private nude pictures as well.

View on HN

Apple, with all those Apple == Privacy billboards plastered everywhere, is going to have a full-time staff of people with the job of looking through it's customers' private photos.

Sue them for false marketing.

Yes, private nude pictures of other people's children too, which do not necessarily constitute pornography. It was common when I was young for parents to take pictures of their kids doing things, clothes or not. Some still exist of me I'm sure.

So far as I know some parents still do this. I bet they'd be thrilled having Apple employees look over these.

And what do you think the content moderation teams employed by Facebook, YouTube, et al. do all day?

Yeah, we obviously needed one more company doing it as well, and I'm sure having more positions in the job market which pretty much could be described as "Get paid to watch pedophilia all day long" will not backfire in any way.

You could say there are harmful effects of these jobs but probably not in the sense you're thinking. https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

They look at content that people actively and explicitly chose to share with wider audiences.

While that's a snappy response, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the concern about perverts getting jobs specifically to view child abuse footage, which is what I thought this thread was about.

I didn't think that was what it's about... Because that didn't even occur to me. Thanks for pointing it out.

There's a big difference in the expectation of privacy between what someone posts on "Facebook, Youtube, et al" and what someone takes a picture of but doesn't share.

A fair point but, again, quite aside from the concern being raised about moderators having to view potentially illegal content.

Couldn’t they always avoid ever flagging pictures taken on the device itself (camera, rather than download) since if those match, it’s always a false positive?

Odd, then, that Facebook reported 20.3 million photos to NCMEC last year, and Apple 265, according to the NYT that is.

Hopefully, in between the moral sponge work they do, occasionally gaze over a growing history of mugshots, years-left-in-sentence reminders, and death notices for the producers of this content, their enablers, and imitators.

Yep! I guess this announcement is when everyone is collectively finding out how this has, apparently quietly, worked for years.

It’s a “killing floor” type job where you’re limited in how long you’re allowed to do it in a lifetime.

There are people who are paid to do that already, just generally not in corporate employment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com