iPhones with iOS 26 are freezing FaceTime calls when they detect nudity (2025) | Hacker News Reader

iPhones with iOS 26 are freezing FaceTime calls when they detect nudity (2025)

pcmag.com

56 pointsvinni234 comments

> Because the photos and videos are analyzed on your child's device, Apple doesn't receive an indication that nudity was detected and doesn't get access to the photos or videos as a result.

Apropos of nothing, I really don't love the construction of this reassurance. This is not actually a reasoned-through guarantee, it's just two things that happen to be true at the same time. But the latter could change at any point, on-device processing does not preclude the device notifying Apple about what it saw.

The backdrop to this is a story from 2023 in which Apple attempted to do this and faced backlash. This received significant coverage worldwide at the time.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-scanning-csam-commun...

And since then, we've seen major companies pressured into instead ripping out E2E encryption from public and governmental child safety concerns.

Yeah, it's clear to see that they'd want to get in front of something like that happening again. My point though is that the pull quote I highlighted is a flimsy reassurance because "it all happens on the device" does not at all prevent "Apple knowing about it," yet the sentence is constructed in a way that (tricks?) people into thinking it would.

That’s true of of every privacy guarantee made by all software. For example: the only guarantee we have that Tor Browser isn’t phoning home usage statistics is 1) that people are inspecting its outbound network traffic with a magnifying glass, and it isn’t; 2) and so over time their guarantee has been accepted as trustworthy. So, no curing assurance can ever be made to the point you’re concerned about, other than to recommend not using software if one assigns high priority to this threat model. So, then, as someone who does, it would be useful to understand your viewpoint in a more concrete/applied sense. I have a handful of questions:

How would you rewrite Apple’s copy to reflect this universal threat? Would you advise GrapheneOS to adopt similar copy (since the concern is equally applicable, what with five nines of users not self-compiling from inspected source) to chip away at Apple’s marketing here? Is your concern restricted to ‘nudity-encountered’ metrics (as in the topic of this post) or is it generic to all ‘xyz-encountered’ metrics, or to all metrics, or..?

You misunderstood and it's really simple. Implying that on-device scanning makes it impossible for them to access any information is misleading. Just drop that faulty reasoning because it creates a dangerous misunderstanding of how technology works.

To illustrate: Because I wrote this comment, the sun is going to rise again tomorrow.

But why would they want to be notified. Seems like this is the best case scenario for them. They’re taking action against the problem and at the same time cannot be approached to break their clients privacy. The only thing I can imagine is a government entity making them do it.

How is that “apropro of nothing”? Isn’t it apropro of the quote from the article you’re commenting on?

Sure, what I meant is "without actually taking a stance on what the article is about and opinions on Apple's feature aside, I dislike the particular placation presented within"

This is an article from almost a year ago, last edited July 3, 2025...

Pausing seems more accurate. Sounds like a nice feature and if you can turn it off then no downside.

I truly don't understand why our society is so hung up on naked bodies.

Read the post.

edit: "This feature, spotted by iDeviceHelp, was originally revealed as part of an expansion of the company's family tools designed for children's Apple accounts."

Pretty clear, this was at least in part designed to prevent child sexual abuse.

Puritan influence.

US is particularly interesting here because it is hyper sexualised, but show a nipple and you go to jail.

Same with violence, it's everywhere, but if you punch or slap someone there's huge chance of getting shot or guaranteed jail time.

This “Ouch” moments when Apple does not want to stand in the front of the Congress trying to prove that they are in fact preventing bad people from abusing kids on one side and try to convince us that they do in fact keep our data secure.

It an interesting place to be in logistically. A very thin line to balance between two very bitter ends.

After Snowden, I don't believe anything an American corporation says.

Apple: "we are the paladin of privacy"

Also Apple: "we know when you are naked and take decisions for you upon that"

What a clown company.

I wasn't looking for your take here, iPhone.

What might be the impact on battery life?

If it lasts longer than 4 hours, contact the apple genius bar.

(2025) Apple adds long-awaited ability to pause irritating FaceTime calls on public transport.

as in, like, freezing so you get to see it longer?

TFA says it pauses when it detects nudity on your end, not the other end. You probably know what you look like nude.

Nooo! My dear wife stop showing me your boobs even though we've been apart on business trips for two weeks and we're both bursting with lust. Please apple save me!

It looks like you can click through it, so you can still have your sexy time. Based on the description, it seems like its intended to prevent accidents, which seems ok to me.

Look how far we've regressed. Forty years ago if the phone company said it was going to spy on conversations and halt phone sex but don't worry because you can always choose to resume it, we'd never have accepted that.

Could the phone company have seen your junk? Or just heard the way you describe it?

That distinction isn't important. We could take it for granted that our conversations wouldn't be analyzed for sexually explicit content, and then companies like Apple normalized the opposite. We hadn't yet been fooled by "think of the children".

Is privacy a concern if the monitoring is locally processed? Apple claims it is.

I say it's amazing how far we've progressed. We could've prevented an entire Seinfeld episode if cameras could warn the user of the presence of nudity in their photos.

Apple claims its on-device, and if thats true then the phone company is not spying on users.

Apple claims "Apple is the best".

Sure, its reasonable to doubt Apple's claim here. Or even think that its accurate now but may change in the future. I'd probably phrase it as a possibility rather than treat it as fait accompli.

Unless you're using a child account, where the guardian account enabled this feature, with intent, this isn't an issue! :D

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