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Comment by thinkloop | Hacker News Reader

Google Photos and Gmail openly and heavily scan server-side, and I'm sure a lot of us use them, how do we reconcile that?

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On the server side. That is the difference. I know that if I put something on Google Drive it is in clear in the Google servers.

What I don't want is Google performing a scan of the internal memory of my Android device!

Server side they can do whatever they want, and I choose what data they can access, but on my device not.

You know it’s still only photos being uploaded to iCloud that are scanned right? Or are you just totally unfamiliar with the actual issue? If you are familiar, can you explain the practical difference between these approaches that makes one worse?

Reading these comments, I think most people have only read Twitter outrage or the flat out wrong news articles conflating the new features. This is also on Apple as they had to know the CSAM on the client was a big deal and really needed it's own PR page.

If you don't like it, you can use Protonmail instead of Gmail, and Mega instead of Google Drive, and still being able use Android device. But I totally understand frustration of users, whose smartphone suddenly turned into spyware.

I don’t use Android, so genuine question here: does an Android phone automatically upload everything to iCloud like an iPhone does?

With the iOS ecosystem, in my experience having everything backed up to iCloud is the default position, and you have to turn it off manually.

The Big Tech is already here, it’s hungry for control and data. Not just for its own good, but to also serve the governments around the world. It’s going to happen eventually, and most people won’t care.

Google is heavily incentivized not to share the data with anyone else.

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