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Comment by zug_zug | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those failure apologies, that's just making us dislike them even more.

I have no idea why they haven't done a 180 yet, this is a bigger failure than the butterfly keyboard. They are letting themselves become the symbol of technological dystopia in the public consciousness. Even an acquaintance who does construction was venting to me about how bad apple's policy is and why she is getting a pixel.

After entirely removing that feature and making a commitment to fight against that kind of future I feel like they owe two more apologies to get on my good side - one for screwing up this bad in the first place and one for insulting my intelligence with their handling of the outcry. This isn't 1990, you don't handwave a mistake this big.

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> Even an acquaintance who does construction was venting to me about how bad apple's policy is

I overheard a group of women on the marketing team at my company talking about how creepy it is and I’ve started having a lot people ask me about it - it doesn’t seem contained to just techie at this point but it is concentrated there. I do think it will continue to grow though, apple has lost control of the narrative around their brand.

On TikTok there are plenty of videos now going around saying “Apple is scanning your phone to report you to the authorities”, with little to no nuance.

This is really, really bad for their brand.

Normally as techies we’d get these texts from friends and tell them everything will be ok.

Except this time we’re mad too, and we tell them it’s way worse than they even know.

Apple fucked up big time.

The is no nuance to this. The iCloud sync is always on. So every time you take a photo with your camera, Apple asks FBI if you're a pedophile or not. If there's a match, it will naturally has to notify the cops. What nuance is there?!

As per what they are saying the algorithm does not ask the fbi anything. It looks for matches independently and only reports things with a fairly high bar. Not defending what they are doing though.

Pure semantics. Whatever entity defines what “matches” controls this process. One guess as to who that is.

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]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQUO1DSwYN0

> I have no idea why they haven't done a 180 yet, this is a bigger failure than the butterfly keyboard.

Pressure from governments.

Bingo. They're not deliberately pushing this, they're just the public face on the initiative. You can complain about Apple all you like, but you're not given the choice to boycott the CIA.

The only reason we were even told this was being introduced in the first place is because it's being run on edge hardware (ie, phones). One talk at DEFCON on weird resource/energy spikes on apple devices and its existance leaks to the public domain which is even worse PR. The only difference is that historically such government level analysis has been conducted behind data center black boxes.

I honestly think Apple could save some face if they simply came out and said, "Various U.S. government agencies are compelling us to do this behind the scenes, and we feel we have no real choice."

Bonus - once you say that, the evidence you produce is no longer legally admissible.

What? No! Apple is the company that refuses the FBI to unlock an iPhone. Admitting that you are just the puppet of surveillance government is exactly the same thing as is happening now.

> you're not given the choice to boycott the CIA.

Well, you could refuse to pay taxes, but that would land you in jail (like most civil disobedience).

I would suggest that it is cooperation with governments in exchange for easement (watering down) of antitrust pushes

Why haven’t they done a 180?

I speculate their hand is being forced by one or more governments and rather than admit that they tried to sell it as best they could. Just speculation.

Regret is not an apology. It means Apple is stating they are disappointed by the confusion, and I am pretty sure that's true.

It's the typical "I'm so sorry you feel that way".

> I have no idea why they haven't done a 180 yet, this is a bigger failure than the butterfly keyboard.

Look at the stock. It barely moved (up).

The stock isn't a like/dislike button. Apparently, the stockholders think that, regardless of what happens, Apple will still be here tomorrow. And to be fair, it's not like a significant portion of Apple customers will throw away their phones.

Pixel will do the same, but they won't make the mistake of announcing the policy.

What's Pixel?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pixel

Which is why this is so bad. Apple sets the trend for the mobile industry.

Expect everyone else to follow suit and not apologize for it because "Apple is doing it".

It's a typical narcissistic non-apology: "I'm sorry you're feeling that way and that I couldn't hurt you without getting away with it more easily."

its not even an apology, its manipulation

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