> it has led to lots of people conflating and mixing and matching elements of both into a fearsome frankensystems.

I agree they could have slowly walked people through the components one by one, but so much of what is in the comments is pure bad faith that I am not sure that it would have helped.

By “bad faith”, I mean strongly asserting as true claims that people know they haven’t checked, and which later turn out to be false.

In a cynical way this might actually be better PR for Apple. They know they can’t prevent people who dislike them from jumping to the most negative conclusions possible. By presenting these features together and letting the crazy interpretations abound, they make their opponents seem unhinged, and this obscures the real but less apocalyptic concerns.

The NN is the system I thought they were making, and I applaud it. The hashing one feels really dangerous, though; I don't think that's people just exaggerating. Apple hasn't done enough to limit their own power, so they might (read: will) be made to use it to hurt people.