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Comment by tomduncalf | Hacker News Reader

Feels like they messed up the comms on this in a quite un-Apple-like way.

My understanding (high level) is their system is designed to improve user privacy by meaning they don't need to be able to decrypt photos on iCloud (which is, if I understand correctly, how other cloud providers do this scanning, which they are required to do by law?), but rather do it on the device - without going in to the upsides and downsides of either approach, I'm surprised they didn't manage to communicate more clearly in the initial messaging that this is a "privacy" feature and why they are taking this approach, and instead are left dealing with some quite negative press.

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For me, my problem with it is nothing more than selfish. There’s literally no upside for me. Best case, my battery dies a little faster or my power bill goes up a small amount that I will never notice. Worst case, I get a SWAT team in my face because someone accidentally clicks “yes” instead of “no” when reviewing a false-positive.

What’s the upside to me, for this tech? There’s less of this content in the world? I don’t see it anyway, so for me, it doesn’t do anything except become a potential (low) risk liability.

I don’t see why I’m paying their power bill to do something they’re legally obligated to do.

Maybe if you somehow gain some power over this trillion-dollar company, it will start to care about your opinion, or the fact that you've been disadvantaged.

That assumption of a certain fairness, or give-and-take outcome, is only applicable in a democratic, free society.

> (which is, if I understand correctly, how other cloud providers do this scanning, which they are required to do by law?)

I don't think that is required by law - at least not in EU or US.

There was already a lot of online outrage in July when EU passed regulation that allowed such scanning for the next 3 years - I imagine requiring it would be much worse.

Ah, I didn't realise that, assumed it was a legal requirement

Apple is good a normal PR and terrible at crisis PR. This is crisis PR, but unlike with bend and antenna gate this should have seen this one coming, since they caused it.

Haha yeah, that is a really good point actually.

Indeed. The crucial thing is: iff you disable iCloud photos upload, the scanning Feature is disabled.

For now.

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