About communication safety in Messages
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I said nothing - stopped the archiving and deleted everything except for my own photos.
They deserve their privacy and do whatever on their devices without snooping - if we go away on vacation I now ask them if they want to share any pics they want so I can keep it.
Apple is turning out to be big brother.
But I get the struggle, I also turned of logging in my AdGuard home instance, at least for my wife’s phone. But it was also a lesson for her when I jokingly told here the website she was on right now… The ISP and Google probably know this too. And, I can find it in my Router without AdGuard, and that Router can be hacked. It’s also a good time for education imho.
Modern tech is so interesting. When I can’t get a hold of my wife I sometimes find myself checking the hallway’s motion sensor, seeing it just registered movement, the unify network reports to Home Assistant that indeed her phone is connected right now. Ah, gas usage, bathroom lighting and moisture sensors indicate she’s taking a shower (boy it seems to be a long one, 0.4 m3 of gas!). I’ll just wait 10 min and if she doesn’t pick up I’ll flash some lights or let the Sonos speak: “Pick up your Phone”. Yeah it’s pretty creepy but sometimes I don’t even think about it… But writing it down like this I could write a “state” sensor for my wife that could, with high probability, tell me what she’s doing and log it.
Friends of ours came to me how to deal with nude photos taken by their underage daughter sent to her boyfriend - told them to contact the parents and go to his house immediately - watch him in the act of deleting the photos.
Fortunately he was not stupid to share it with his mates.
Also told them kids do stuff without thinking through the consequences and not to be too hard on them - think she only lost phone privilege's for a week.
I do have a IP camera in the house but it is angled and to watch our parrot when he is on top his cage and alert us if he decides to take a walk.
Microsoft Outlook sends me a prompt when I forget to attach something to an email. Something like "Hey it looks like you forgot to add an attachment, would you like to proceed?" The prompt gives me two choices, cancel or send anyway. Similarly to the nudity check, Microsoft scans the content of your email to understand if you intended to send an email with an attachment or not. Would you consider this to be "big brother"?
This isn't just a feature for children. Adults can turn this feature on to prevent themself from ever accidentally sending nude pics.
The problem is if the ML flags something and forward it to a human (even anonymized) to decide on for quality control purposes - that is why Alexa,Google and Apple smart speakers are banned in my house.
I only allow dumb bluetooth speakers.
I think she deserves to know it leaked outside of her assumed "comfort zone"
There was no malice intended by me and I learned a life lesson regarding privacy - I expected for myself but did not even think about granting the same to my kids.
So I don't log internet activity - no net nannies - just use Unifi WiFi to make sure bandwidth is distributed fairly to all devices and to block spam/ads via Piehole.
And it's wonderful that you learned a lesson about the privacy of your children. I'm positive there are many parents who would have freaked out and gone further in violating their child's privacy and autonomy.
Also, I have to respect that it's an opt-in feature by the parents/guardians, but the feature still allows the kid to view whatever the image was without actually alerting the parents. In a way, that tradeoff is the best-case scenario for this sort of automated scanning — it allows parents to put safeguards in place while still giving kids their privacy and not blocking anything. Curious to see if that becomes leverage to normalise scanning in general.
If you're an adult, one is forcing this feature on you. No one is scanning your photos against known CP. No one is receiving or looking at your photos, or flagging you as a freedom-fighting, enemy of the state aggitator.
This isn't their Anti-CSAM rollout. It comes with no cost to you and may help warn some kids before making a mistake.
There's no room for subtlety in some discussions, downvote to prove it.
Kids receiving unsolicited pornographic content is sexual harassment and nobody regardless of age should be subjected to that. Giving people tools to opt in seems great to me.
But that would be censorship so Apple=bad.
Sending or receiving is explicit images is dangerous for children.
"Think of the children" is often just a cover for ulterior motives, but it is sometimes an adequate or even excellent reason to do something.
This feature from Apple is great. It seems to respect privacy, is fully controlled by the user or their parent, and will increase safety for those who choose to use it.
A common tactic used by child predators is to catfish a child, get the child to send explicit images of themselves, and then blackmail them with those images into doing much worse things. I think this feature will make it less likely for this to happen, and has practically zero downside.
It would be more satisfying to downvote for ignoring site guidelines.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and internet tropes.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
I followed each of those guidelines, I was on topic, I didn't comment on how people voted on comments (that was more of an informal survey) and most importantly, wasn't boring.
They already scan all photos uploaded to iCloud serverside (because all such photos are not end-to-end encrypted and are readable by Apple, including all your nudes in your camera roll), so we're not talking about iCloud - they will roll out clientside scanning of all your local data and your OS will report on you to the police without your approval or consent.
Mark my words, this is coming. Apple has said as much, and while they made subsequent statements to try to smooth over the bad PR, they have not said that they are not going to - and they did say that they are.
You present no evidence for any of this. Apple was stung by both expert and public responses. It could come, it could go away. If you know something please share otherwise admit this is speculation, like 90% of these comments.
Apple aren't banning anything. They're detecting nudity, and asking you if you're sure. And that's only if you've turned this on!
I can think of several women I know who would quite like to have had a warning about incoming nudity before it appeared.
More information is better than less. I don't see a problem here at all.
For that matter, I could see the appeal of just the blurring feature in general. Checking your texts in public might be a risky proposition even if the photo is totally wanted.
When you are together with a significant other, sometimes you video call them, and sometimes they're in the bathroom, or shower, when they answer (what are they supposed to do, not answer a call from their beloved?). And during these calls they tease eachother, shift the camera in a non conventional angle, private parts exposed. Or they send naughty pictures to eachother, starting small scale, maybe escalating a bit.
All of this is normal, natural, playfully, I would even say: innocent fun. Nobody plans for it, maybe not even asking each other to do it, it naturally evolves with the relationship, partners doing it out of their own free will. Adults do it, teenagers do it. Again, it's normal!
Whenever this happes through a system that is not fully E2E encrypted, those pictures/videos get stored, analysed, accessed by employees, or even 3rd party contractors that label them for text to speech ML purposes.
My advice, use Signal (since it's always e2e encrypted) to avoid the creepy 3rd party eyes, and carry on with your life.
As for the presented "nudity filter" and it's functionality... you can't stop a determined teenager from doing what they aim to do. Assume they're smarter and more tech savy than you are, and this will just be a barrier they will find a way to overcome. Better to keep them safe (give them Signal e2e encrypted) rather than giving them prohibition (this never worked, and it most likely never will).
> Messages now includes tools that warn children and provide helpful resources if they receive or attempt to send photos that may contain nudity.
> Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo appears to contain nudity. The feature is designed so that Apple doesn’t get access to the photos.
For example, if I was still a teenager and had to deal with this, first thing I would do: search and download a collection of thousands of "Harambee nipples" pictures that trigger this filter, send them back and forward between me and my mates non stop to annoy the crap out of my parents and generate noise. Second, I would try to add a "sticker" into one of the pictures until I find a shape, size, and position that will bypass the filter, without hiding the nudity. When such a discovery is made that person will be a hero among teens and it will spread like wildfire.
I don't believe this feature will have the intended effect and I estimate it will take less than 2 hours before it's "broken". My conclusion is that if you want to keep them safe, you have to think vastly outside the "inquisition" box and try education, not prohibition.
1) the kid is warned that the photo might be adult content. They can just tap to see 2) parents are informed that their child received such content
That's it. There's no need for magic harambe nipple filters :)
If a device I own (even if just nominally) does something I've instructed it to, and nothing more - that's fine by me. Computers doing their job, honestly.
If a device is programmed to report on me to someone and I haven't explicitly asked it for this - that's not fine, no matter the intent.
Until you realise Apple has been scanning your iCloud photos for government banned content for years.
And that the on device option was better for your privacy not worse.
No it wasn't. Previously pictures weren't scanned directly on my phone, then they were about to be. That was a downgrade of privacy, not an improvement. The fact that it was only going to be applied to photos due to be uploaded to iCloud is irrelevant - you are still using my own device to scan my own photos, and if it fails some completely opaque check that I have no control over, you will report me to law enforcement(who will then do god knows what). Not to mention that during the analysis process my pictures will be shown directly to a human in a centre somewhere who will judge them if they are legal or not. Again, I'm really struggling to see how this is an improvement in privacy.
>>Until you realise Apple has been scanning your iCloud photos for government banned content for years.
Source? Apple has maintained for years that they don't scan pictures already uploaded to iCloud, since they are encrypted and Apple doesn't have access to them.
Absolutely not true.
When you scan on the server, like Google does, that information is open to abuse by anyone who issues a warrant, and I wouldn't be willing to bet that the warrant is a hard requirement.
>Google’s Nest Will Provide Data to Police Without a Warrant
https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-d...
Which part isn't true? Pictures aren't scanned directly on the phone anywhere, that's true of both Android and iOS. Apple's implementation would change that, again, making their privacy implementation worse not better.
>>When you scan on the server, like Google does
I don't see how that's relevant. Apple wasn't scanning on their servers(at least that's what they say publicly, I don't doubt that NSA has access to the data anyway).
Google is scanning everything in your Google Drive on server, and that data can be accessed and abused by anyone willing to issue a warrant.
Google's system is worse for privacy.
That's explicitly not true - your phone would scan the photos, if it failed the scan, then the photo would be uploaded to their verification centre where a human would look at the pictures in person and decide to forward them to law enforcement or not. We can argue whether the "verification centre" is Apple having access to scan data/results, but I feel like that's splitting hairs. It's a downgrade for the privacy that you used to have with Apple, not an improvement.
>>Google's system is worse for privacy.
I have zero idea why you keep bringing Google up. I'm saying that Apple's proposed system is a downgrade of their privacy implementation, not an improvement. What google does or does not do is not relevant to that argument.
You seem to be discussing the system Apple never implemented.
I am discussing the system that has just been announced.
Yes, in the system just announced, it's an opt in parental control where Apple has no access to the images being scanned and doesn't know the scan results, while Google is busily scanning all the contents of everything in your Google account.
How do Google customers opt out of that?
What gave it away? The fact that I originally replied to the comment which was discussing that never released CSAM scanning system?
>>I am discussing the system that has just been announced.
So as I suspected, you are arguing against an argument I have never made.
>>How do Google customers opt out of that?
How do I opt out of you asking about Google if literally no part of my argument was about Google?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/01/08/apple-scan...
And of course the whole issue with backups not being encrypted.
If Apple could do it on-device reliably, they could encrypt their storage and there would be no "think of the children" -reason to allow government agencies access to the files anymore.
To me this winds up feeling totally fine as a trade-off, particularly if it wound up paving the way for actual end-to-end encryption of the photos, though I see that it bothers some people.
For instance, this article from 2014:
>Google scans everyone's email for child porn, and it just got a man arrested
https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/5/5970141/how-google-scans-y...
I fully expect similar things to happen here.
Not exactly a thin end of the wedge problem here.
sweet, now the iPhone (which a child shouldn't use in the first place) is nannying the kid and doing "the talk" instead of the parents.
how soon until your phone makes your son sit trough an entire sex-ed class on his first NSFW internet search?
1:1 conversation couldn't be more different from NSFW internet searches. A malicious party can use coercive tactics to have the child send them compromising photos.
Children shouldn't drive cars, they shouldn't do drugs and they shouldn't use smartphones.
Would you be fine with a beer company making a "safe" version of beer for kids so they get hooked and once they turn 21 they switch to the real stuff and become alcoholics?
Making these devices more "child friendly" is the wrong solution to the problem. Actually, it's the absolute BEST solution if you are Apple and want to calm the parents down and sell more phones and services at the same time. Unfortunately I'm not Apple and my objective regarding my kids is not to maximize profits and push complex technology to people down to the last semi-conscious toddler
I'm curious about how you feel about Google Image's SafeSearch being turned on by default. Is it also worthy of such ire?
This feature is targeted firmly at that demographic who generally aren’t going to listen to what their parents say on this matter. But whom will suffer the worst if their photos are spread around the school.
I wish I received that the first time I looked for NSFW content (at 11). I’m totally fine with this kind of warnings for kids.
Some nude content is wanted or warranted by the user, and some of isn't. Apple isn't blocking this content, only optionally hiding it—almost identically to Reddit's NSFW feature for mature adults. The "Ways to Get Help" might overstep the bounds for some situations, but it might also prevent others from getting worse.
Often, children are uncomfortable with sharing about being exposed to uncomfortable content. While that may be a fault of parenting, it doesn't make this tool any less useful.
I don't own any iDevices but it kinda bothers me that the world seems to close in on itself while at the same time breaking its own back bending over backwards to include _EVERY_ONE_[1].
[1] Except the ones who are wrong.
The analysis is done on device, and no data is sent to Apple, and no data is decryptable by Apple (presumably this also applies to SMS but SMS is unencrypted and routed through carriers).
If the device does decide that a message contains nudity it blurs the image and provides “age appropriate prompts” which sounds like suggestions to contact their parents.
1. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/15/apple-nixes-csam-refere...
Only the images being sent, from a child's phone, with the optional feature turned on, are scanned and when approved for that message, blurred. There is nothing about clandestinely reporting your images to anyone.
Just read the article.
Before the whole Anti-CSAM debacle, one legitimate concern was that iPhones are more commonly used for CSAM than other platforms and there was a perception that Apple wasn't doing enough about it.
Their stance on privacy was opening them up to attacks by the 'think of the children' types, weakening both its brand and political capacity to withstand pressure to weaken encryption, create backdoors etc.
This feature is an impressive counter volley in that space. It doesn't compromise security or privacy of normal users, it's optional and should be reasonably effective. But in creating this, Apple insulates itself from the suggestion it is doing nothing to help protect children.
So this feature could actually give Apple a face saving way to discard the creepy Anti-CSAM idea altogether and win it enough clout to keep fighting government pressure generally.
It's a net win for privacy. We need to pick our battles and not reflexively go after Apple with 'this is a dry run for on device scanning/police state' type baseless accusations.
The difference is that images of violence aren't as strongly associated with things like sharing of personal images that haunt a person later, with really disgusting and effective forms of bullying, or with efforts to get kids to do something harmful IRL. Could they be? Can I concoct such a scenario? Sure, but these other things are in-fact happening a lot (ask any teacher or other person who works with kids ages ~12 and up)
That's why specifically when it comes to Internet messaging services and kids, nudes are a bigger problem than images of violence. I agree with you more broadly, but the context is important here, and is why in this narrow case the two things are meaningfully different, and nudity is the bigger problem.
Can't speak for Germany, but in the US there's been a lot of furor around school-aged people having some pretty severe troubles after nude photos they shared with a partner got shared more widely -- suicides, etc. We could certainly argue that the fact they're facing trouble because of such things is itself a symptom of a problem in American society, but a first-level solution of warning people before they get into the situation seems like something Apple can do, whereas broad cultural changes are outside their power.
Countries in Europe are so different. I’m guessing the same can be said of the countries in the Americas, as well as states and provinces even.
Also, yeah, all the people working at Apple are all saints and they would never abuse this. /s
Unless your parents are technologically illiterate, they will set it up as a device part of a family. That’s how they know.
This has its flaws, but that’s what we got now.
> using phone's camera to see who's using it
Most definitely not going to happen. Even if it did, it’s no worse than Face ID.
> The communication safety feature [...] is available to child accounts signed in with their Apple ID and part of a Family Sharing group. This feature is off by default.
In Family Sharing you can designate AppleIDs in your family as being child accounts. An AppleID is mandatory to use iMessage, so thats how Apple "knows".
says everything.
At the same time in Europe you go to a nude beach and there are whole families with kids and literally nobody has problems with it. Clothing is optional. No one bothers nude people, no one bothers clothed ones.
In Germany or Sweden you can get your [banned by Apple] out in a public place not designated for nudity per se and this just normal.
But yeah, lets ban more normal/natural stuff.
People who turn on Nudity check, opt in to a nude check.
It's not a "nude beach"... it's "beach".
I'm pretty sure "America is scared of naked bodies" is some internet folk tail that Europeans love to tell.
At least the ones I've seen in Germany have a nude section and a non-nude section. It's usually not mixed.
At least it was common in the region I lived, there are more prissy places though. I wouldn't do it anymore when everyone has a smartphone though even if taking pictures will get you in huge trouble too.
Child abuse is a terrible problem, but big tech and politicians are using it as leverage to erode all of our right to privacy. What's next, let's monitor all text communication to stop perverts texting with your child? It will be hailed as another great step towards fighting paedophilia.
The problem with the "child abuse" angle is that protesting against these changes turns everybody against you, because normal people don't have anything to hide. "Why do you hate the children?"
We are losing all of our right to privacy with a massive applause.
Once people internalise the "nothing to hide" argument they begin to reach for the question "what do you have to hide that makes you think this isn't ok" before they are even prompted with the usual arguments about it only being for finding drugs, guns, terrorists, pedophiles, etc
The fact this is on device and off by default is good because that's how this sort of customer feature should be built, like being able to install a DNS filter or other website filtering software. If you're worried, these options should be available to protect your children... but sadly its a small step from "these are available" to "why didn't the government make them turn it on before I bought it for my child and didn't turn it on before giving it to my child"
There is now a feature that scans every photo you receive. There previously was not something scanning every photo you receive. What used to be a conversation between 2 people is now a conversation between 2 people and an Apple blackbox (assuming you turn the feature on).
As with most of these types of tech, the proponents of the "this involves erosion of privacy" aren't necessarily concerned with the exact implementation as described on release, but with how the blackbox works and how the blackbox (and the laws/regulations/obligations around it) will change in the future, and the inability to change the settings of the blackbox, effectively letting Apple become the touchstone for what is 'appropriate', even if it doesn't align with your view of 'appropriate'.
1) Seen the automatic-text-recognition-on-images features in recent iOS? It's already scanning ~every photo you look at, and not just in iMessage. If you put an image in Photos, it's also doing some object recognition on it (which you can see if you search for e.g. "books" or "chairs" in Photos). Dunno if it does that elsewhere, but the text-recognition thing, yeah, that happens all over the OS in all kinds of apps. Maybe (probably) you can turn that off, but this feature folks are complaining about is opt-in so that shouldn't be relevant for this line of reasoning.
And furthermore:
> Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo appears to contain nudity. The feature is designed so that Apple doesn’t get access to the photos.
2) If you don't like this because you don't trust this statement to be true, then I have some bad news for you about who writes the entire closed-source operating system that runs on iOS devices and are the only ones who can deploy any code they like to them, basically at any time.
This is an opt in feature so it’s up to parents whether they think it’s appropriate or not, but I think it’s weird that people are getting mad at Apple for providing a secure, private way to do this when child abuse online is a real thing that happens and some parents may believe that it’s appropriate to trade off some of their young children’s privacy in exchange for some small degree of protection against that.
They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable in some way or another. But would they choose to give other reasons for their actions, there would definitely be more backslash about their snooping.
People in general know that protecting the innocent is a good thing and Apple exploits this to push their agendas under the guise of children protection. Again.
Like yes: the explicit purpose of parental controls is to allow parents to place limits on what their kids can do on a device, and in America specifically protect them from the concept of people existing under their clothes.
But I fail to see what Apple is doing here that you find offensive? Did you read the article and description of how the feature is enabled and works or did you just decide “Apple is evil and is choosing what I get to see”?
Not all "protections" are the same.
Everything happens on-device, with no use of Apple servers, and this is clearly called out in the release above. And beyond that, this is a feature that is only enabled by the parent, who society already accepts has the power to censor what their child views.
What you said would be like saying that the GNU foundation is reading your conversations when you type something into emacs.
If the US (and American tech companies) cared at all about children, or human life in general, they would do something about guns.
As a European, seeing videos on YT glorifying guns and gun culture is extremely shocking. I would let my kids run around naked all day, anytime, rather than letting them watch one video showing people firing an AR-15 like it's the most normal thing in the world.
YouTube is a cesspit though and I can totally see some overcaffeinated "content creator" churning out videos that misrepresent and pervert the otherwise sane tenets of firearms education.
But - there's the "think of the children" hypocrisy again. Think of the children, and "do something about" (i.e. ban) guns. Or ban videos about guns?
Kids can look at genitals all day but heaven forbid they watch a video about a gun? Or play video games that feature guns? Where's it end? We've exchanged one instance of hypocrisy for another. No thanks!
Culture is a different thing to discuss, sure, and glorifying violence is bad - which is what some of those videos do, though not all of them.
Still, we see countries like the Czech Republic where firearms may be carried concealed, nearly anywhere, with licensing on a shall-issue basis: there are relatively reasonable conditions not far from US-based shall-issue permit requirements (for the US states still even requiring a permit), as well, and CZ doesn’t seem to have issues.
Education about gun safety, and just general personal responsibility, used to be a thing in the US but the “education system” here fails us these days.
The fact that their principles might happen to be at-least-mostly-revenue-neutral is another discussion, though, I suppose.
> there should be a "see anyway" button
If you read the article and look at the pictures, "View photo..." is right underneath the blurred photo. It may not be called "see anyway", and it may not be a button per se, but it has the exact same effect.
Why? If you harass someone, you will put it into contacts so that it is easier.
That is absurd too.
I'm well aware you can't protect them from all these things, but a lot of people who have young kids seem to think that as soon as they get to school it'll all be OK. My experience has been that the games get harder and stakes rise drastically, to the point where I often consider that killing myself would be a logical way out.
That’s not to say I won’t also be talking about the world, and things they’re likely to encounter. Those conversations are happening even now, he’s not being raised in a petri dish, but equally I’d quite like to avoid throwing him directly into a vat of toxic waste unprepared if I can avoid that. Ultimate children are just that, children, they’re not renowned for solid decision making skills.
There will always be perverts sending nudes to kids one way or another. Where I grew (before the internet) we've had them arrested near schools.
Pretending the world is all unicorns and rainbows is not the way to raise your children IMO - the hard truth is going to hit them sooner or later. Talk to them, treat them as young adults, and explain what is good and what is not, and why.
Fun story: I'm into crossfit semi-professionally and I've recently been very pleased to hear my 5 y.o. telling her friends that they should not eat that much fries and coke if they want to stay healthy and suggested they try fish and chicken instead.
I actually find it scary. I believe that children need to experience the maximum of stuff, and as a French they need to taste all the food, whatever unhealthy they are. Schools are a already pushing a lot of propaganda on children about saving the planet. I can see that the next step will be to tell them that meat pollute and they should be vegan to save the planet.
My child is sometimes telling me things like this and I tell him that he is totally healthy and does not need to worry.
that's a good stand to have, and I would argue that the kid tried to concur:
>> eat that much fries and coke
>> try fish and chicken instead
"that much" (!= never) and "try" (!= have to) seem to be key in the dialog here, although from these excerpts only we get a highly decontextualised version. nonetheless to me it sounded like they always indulge in the same food
> experience the maximum of stuff ... need to taste all the food
Now replace food with drugs, how would you feel? coz TBH some food out there borderlines on being drug-like in terms of addictiveness, both when ingested and how they're being advertised.
The way we raise our child is try food, sure, but be mindful of what you eat. we're certainly not opposed to bad food once in a while, forbidding it would only make it that more alluring. also being healthy right now doesn't mean bad habits can't creep in, and healthy habits are tough to instill after the fact once bad habits have taken hold.
>Now replace food with drugs, how would you feel? coz TBH some food out there borderlines on being drug-like in terms of addictiveness, both when ingested and how they're being advertised.
Well, I also have a big one, nearly 18, and I don't understand him at all. He is spending his free time at the gym, he tells me he goes with his friends. At his age I was trying drugs and binge drinking. I'm in total disconnect here...
Doing nothing until you can do 100% of everything is not how anything works.
Apple should fix this by creating a kid mode, where the user can only contact people approved by parents and visit sites approved by parents or conforming to kid safety requirements. In this case the children will be perfectly safe.
Why Apple doesn't do it? I guess because it is unprofitable, it requires major investments and doesn't promise any returns.
Kids must be banned from the Internet completely instead of trying to patch different issues here and there.
I required approval for a child's app purchases. The notification is dismissed when I try to get password from password manager.
Shared photo albums? In a family? This is looks to be getting some attention now, rather belatedly.
Meanwhile, the opt in button for this is simple, clear and easy.
You can do everything you said when you manage your kids accounts (manage contacts, whitelist internet websites, define appropriate content ratings and so on.
I got my first phone at 35. I figure my kids can wait a bit.
Have you tried? It's a dumpster fire.
Child requests app purchase > I get notification > It wants my AppleID password > I go to password manager to get password, but this dismisses the notification.
I believe it's getting a bit of love this OS cycle, but it's hopeless currently.
For restricting access to the internet: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 For restricting access to contacts: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-screen-time-fo...
Maybe make a support page about one of its features.
That could get posted to Hacker News.
I could continue.
Or if they are no longer available, shouldn't there be a parental control of a white-list of contact numbers that can show more than just the text in the message? This automatic filtering seems like a slippery slope.
In Rome there were statues of Dionysus sporting a huge erection everywhere. It wasn't a problem.
In Italy today still, you can find postcards of him in the same position. (Granted, they are statues, not images in the flesh, but they're pretty realistic.)
I would have a problem with an adult sending nude pictures of themselves to my kids. But I would confront them myself, I don't need Apple's help in preventing it from ever happening like it's a horrible risk.
It's nothing. Really one of the least important problems ever.
I'm much more worried about my kids being glued to stupid games or "harmless" (but constantly updating) TikTok videos.
How do you get "OK with sexual predators" from that?
Just because you feel that way doesn’t mean others do. Everyone parents differently. This is an optional feature that you don’t have to turn on and is off by default.
The same applies to the parent poster I quoted, who was then told they must support sexual predators because of their different parenting.
They didn't tell you to how to feel or tell you how to parent. They stated how they feel and how they parent. You don't have to agree, but that doesn't mean they support sexual predators.
>This is an optional feature that you don’t have to turn on and is off by default.
Yes, that's been well established, and I don't think anyone in this comment chain has said otherwise.
But yeah, I wouldn't mind all that much; it would raise a red flag for sure, given that many grooming operations work by starting out as raising children's curiosity, but I do not see any inherent issue with my child seeing a penis (erect or not!).
As an adult you can just turn this feature off, if you use messages for this kind of thing.
Kids seeing themselves or each other nude is pretty normal. Kids are curious. That being said, luckily none of the awkward curiosities we entertained when I was a kid had any chance of ending up on some kind of iCloud permanent record, so maybe this is for the better.
Not sure if I see anything particularly wrong with that. Apple is an American company.
I have a feeling that sending nudes to a child's phone isn't exactly lauded as "natural" in Europe. Of course I'm a prude, unnatural, and I guess violent American though so what do I know.
Not to mention it's an opt-in parental control feature for children's accounts.
The quality of the comments here are really poor.
The primary problem with censorship isn’t usually the core motivation. We can all agree that adults shouldn’t send porn to kids, and kids shouldn’t send nudes to anyone, etc etc. Sadly we don’t all agree on what that means - the law is a poor substitute for thinking and understanding context.
Automatic policing will lead to automatic prosecution, we have seen this with Facebook intercepting messages and automatically dispatching relevant authorities. In the case of suicide risks, many agreed this was a public good. Is it a public good when it is done for pot which is illegal federally even though it is legal in California? Do we really want a private company making these choices? Do we really want them in the middle even if it’s “on device” when the device isn’t even open for meaningful inspection?
It is the infrastructure and the corner cases which create a chilling effect on society. Once this is done in one place, it will expand to others.
Do you really think that Saudi won’t push for this on every woman’s telephone? Why limit it only to children? And why limit it only to being opt in?
Do you really not see the future you’re endorsing and that apple is building based on profit motives which are dressed up as “obvious” moral protection schemes?
Remember: the husband in Saudi is the legal guardian/censor of his children but also his fully grown (usually but not always) adult wife.
This can technically expand to textual rather than image censorship as well, we should stop it before that happens. Your device is your own personal space as much as the device is yours or as permitted by law (eg union organization on company time and company computers is sometimes protected).
Providing solutions to do automatic policing on your own device is insanely totalitarian. It isn’t a solution to doing it on company servers which also should not happen. We should not be building this technology and we should regulate the companies to uphold basic civil liberties, especially when they are a de facto monopoly.
I much prefer the European view of children being raised as young adults, seeing the world for what it is, rather than the American idea of creating a puritan parallel society scrubbed of all the “bad” things.
Looking back on this I’ve found that the European model raises better critical thinkers – partly due to the school system as well – and you end up with a more sustainable parent-child relationship when the children are grown.
In a world where US culture basically shapes the design of the tech products and social media we all use, this scares me.
This is a key point. Today we are all so progressively aware of "cultural hegemony" and wallow in the shame of colonialism. But we don't see its new and more powerful forms.
The prevalence of digital technology means that companies like Apple and Google imposing their values is a real problem. And let's be clear, these are often very parochial values.
It could be said that Europe's digital split with US is only about things like privacy and data control on the surface. Underneath are more subtle cultural forces at play.
And sadly, beneath all the headlines about AI sentience, this is what Blake Lemoine was actually trying to draw attention to, and that executives consistently dismiss these kinds of concerns [1].
What of the consequences when these corporate values become embedded in AI that plays an ever greater role in our lives?
Considering that Californian children are no less sheltered, I find it hard to believe that this effect on thought is meaningful.
There is a solid case that the US morality is harmful to children.
To girls in particular, even, but this aspect of feminism does not seem popular today.
2019 2001
USA 16.7 45.0
NL 2.5 7.8
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbi...
I just find it funny when prudish initiatives are promoted under pretence of the same.
But I do think that being an attractive immigrant destination is a thing to aspire to.
So, if you take Germany, Californians are:
- happier
- more wealthy
- more innovative
- have fewer mums die
Now, either this means this better critical thinking described isn't manifesting into any life outcomes, or (and perhaps this is a question worth asking), it isn't better after all.
No matter how good life is in other respects, it's tough for some people (myself included) to feel good when the weather is cold, gray, rainy, and dreary for months on end.
it does not
it's 11.7 per 100,000 in California and 7 per 100,000 in Germany.
Despite similar spending per capita in healthcare.
> Considering that Californian children are no less sheltered
They come from families that on average are a lot more wealthy than the average German family and live in a much more pleasant weather.
Bit apples to oranges.
Easy mistake to make, though, since you have to be aware of definitional differences.
A start to that is here: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DMCAH/surveillance/CDPH...
But you'll have to go read the guidelines to read the difference.
If this doesn't seem like a stretch to you, by all means continue.
Anyway your numbers are not better than Germany, but also:
What country has the highest rate of maternal mortality? The U.S. Key Findings: The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.
Average US mortality rate is 17/100,000
Average European mortality rate is 8/100,000
Remember that in Europe live at least a hundred million more people than in US an it includes much less developed countries than any US State.
Yet the US average is two times worse than EU and 8.2 (EIGHT!) times worse than Belarus (BELARUS!), Poland or my country, Italy.
You know who's got the same stats of US?
Russia. Yes. That Russia.
US maternal mortality rate is the same of Russia, despite spending billions over billions more on healthcare.
Despite being considered a third World country from the American POV.
To put things in perspective for you: Turkmenistan MMR is 10, in Iran is 16, in Tajikistan is 17 (same of the USA).
Can a certain kind of mentality against women bodies considered "unholy" be the cause of it?
Just asking, I don't know the answer.
Turns out a country can be superior at one thing without being superior at all the things.
* better c-t does not lead to better l-o
* the c-t is worse
If you feel that World Cups are a better measure than maternal mortality rate, then have at it. The measures we choose are arbitrary, so we can just lay them all out. I'm happy to accept relevant metrics if you have them to show. Personally, I think a society with better critical thinking overall would be able to, given resources, reduce the number of dying new mothers but if you believe there is no relationship I am happy to just accept metrics you offer.
Their success is based on cars, an engineering tradition, the US dollar, the biggest local market, DARPA, the protestant religion, competing nation states next door and a hundred other things.
What I personally think the handling and censorship of nudity might actually influence is democratic discourse, mechanisms of what shocks, what should be censored, what works for populism, what is seen as freedom and what ultimately gets elected.
Having raised a 3 year old in the Bay Area (SF and Albany/Berkeley), I've anecdotally noticed a lot less of the puritan/sheltering attitude you're talking about than in other places in the US. I'd say a moderate version of 'free range parenting' is actually the dominant trend these days around here.
fair enough
> maternal mortality
Don't know about California, but the US beats Europe in the sense of having 3x maternal mortality
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maternal-mortality-mdgs?c...
> income, and wealth
fair enough
> comparable gross product
higher in the US, though a lot of that is because of more hours worked
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...
> life expectancy
US has stagnated recently, and now about 2 years less
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...
That aside, it would be nice if we could survive just a single thread about a child protection feature without endless absurdist arguments and strawmen being offered.
I appreciate the reply to this comment indicating nudity is often unsolicited. That's very true. A productive thread regarding a feature like this might include discussion of how to limit its scope, or how it might be safely extended to other kinds of harmful content a child might want to avoid. A pointless thread might be one where the heart of the tech industry continues to ignore the fact many new parents ban all unsupervised Internet and new media usage for their children well into their teens due to problems like this remaining unsolved for decades now, and the industry being utterly incapable of having a sober conversation about it.
Nudist beaches or naturalists' resorts are everywhere in Europe, even where it's less obvious, like in the former communist block.
EDIT: if we are talking about kids nudity, like changing them in the open, in front of everybody, that's never been an issue in my almost 50 years on this Planet as European living in Europe.
(obviously that's just my own travel experience, I don't doubt there are places in all of those countries where that's not true)
The reason people try to control children's access to tech and social media isn't because they might see a nipple (lol) but because it's addictive and prevents them from doing anything else.
If we realy want to "protect the chidren" we should start by dismantling FAANGs.
I'd suggest arguments for or against any particular culture or lifestyle, or attempting to deny they exist, exceed the scope of discussing the feature itself.
If they are looking for porn themselves (e.g. are of the age to care for such things), they can download it themselves via Safari.
But generally speaking there’s no need to trade this stuff on iMessage.
Having issues with nudity is absolutely not "American". Nor are Germany or Sweden moral compasses by which everybody else should strive to live like.
Look around the world, there are many countries and billions of people around Africa, China, South East Asia, the Middle East, that are as "prudish" if not massively more so than USA. Even with a European or western-centric myopia, does it really hold? How about Poland or New Zealand?
In any case, I don't see what the point is. USA is overall not as liberal with nudity as some European countries. So what? Germany has blasphemy laws and laws punishing people who talk about things, is that normal or natural?
I don’t see anything about Apple banning nudity, where are you reading that?
In the US it is the opposite.
Well ok: if you specifically go to a nude beach, I'd expect you'd see naked people and nobody going there having any issue with it. That's why it's called a "nude beach" right?
But they're not common. In France where I go the most often, out of 8 kilometers of beaches on the district, there's like 100 meters (1/100th of the coastal area) where nudism is allowed. And it's not even on a beach: it's all rocks. The town hall picked that one spot, far away from the beaches, to isolate the nudists. It's tiny. There may be a few famous nudists spots around the country but they're not common.
Still France: there are only two cases I can think of where a woman showing its nipples in public is considered normal and that'd be monokini on the beach (but not full nudism) and breastfeeding. You don't see women walking topless in the streets.
Monokini on the beaches is allowed everywhere in France as far as I know but it's way less common to actually see women in monokini than it used to be when I was a kid in the eighties.
Quite literally nothing has been banned here.
I struggle to believe that you read and understood this article before sharing this view. This is an opt-in feature, specifically for use with the existing parental control system, that enables pretty light-touch and overridable prompts if a child receives something that looks like nudity. It's clearly targeted at unsolicited nude pictures being sent to children, and differential cultural views on public nudity have essentially zero relevance to that.
Now instead of an interesting discussion about this feature—why it might be good or bad, the privacy or social implications of it, and so on—we just have a chain of fucking nonsense comments unrelated to it.
Could it be that the precarious conditions (families disrupted, lack of intimate space, moral degradation) to which the populations there were submitted during the war shaped this culture?
If yes, what does it tell about the value of this culture?
We most likely wouldn't have to deal with the cyber moral police, and total lack of privacy we deal with now (which this is part of)
And it isn't just nude or iMessage either. Tim Cooks' Apple have been forcing their American culture / political stuff to the rest of the world for quite some time.
Part of the reason why I wish I could move away from Apple. Unfortunately Microsoft or Google doesn't seems to be competing and they aren't that much different either.
When a nudist put their clothes back on, then that's it. When a photo goes out and spreads beyond the control of the kid, then that's just the beginning.
It's just a very good option.
In Oregon full nudity is 100% legal everywhere, with no restrictions. Yes, I have seen many penisis I didn’t want to see; sometimes from the naked bike rides, sometimes from people in mental health crisis, sometimes from people who are just too high to pull up their pants.
Technically it’s only allowed for “protests” in Portland, but nudity laws just practically aren’t enforced.
Other natural things I get to see without restriction: smoking meth, shitting on transit stop, lying in pool of own fluids, pissing on lamp post, and having psychotic break. Europeans can only dream of such unbridled freedom.
Except in Japan they install an app called Kodomamo onto kids phones to do this exact thing.
It's just an NSFW screen that you can click straight through. For me, the benefit is that it gives children an extra thinking moment before they view something that may not be appropriate, or send something that they may not feel 100% comfortable doing.
I've lived in Europe all my life and I'd 100% enable this for my kid.
Please don't post like that again. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note these in particular:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
"Don't be snarky."