If you're uploading your photos to someone else's computer, you've already accepted this state of things. It's a trade-off for convenience.

I'm not and you shouldn't either.

I'm not telling you what to do, am I?

Every other cloud provider has scanned since 2013. We're already in the Orwellian dystopia.

Can someone explain this to me --

The whole premise is that Google and Facebook and everyone else are just doing this on the unencrypted photos you upload, in their cloud, with their own (presumably, but correct me if I'm wrong) undocumented algorithms and datasets.

Now here comes Apple, documenting almost everything except the dataset itself, and everyone is freaking out because it's happening on your own device. But then it's encrypting the whole thing and uploading it to Apple where they presumably do no additional scanning.

What is the actual difference if it's being looked for on-device vs. by the provider? Supposedly in preparation for a bigger push of encryption of the photos themselves, if they are not already encrypted in the cloud.

Am I missing something more than "but it's happening on-device!"?

I think part of it is that Apple has always said "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone". People expect Microsoft to be evil, and (post "don't be evil") Google to be evil. Apple was supposed to be the good guys in this. So it's more surprising and feels more like a betrayal when Apple decides to be evil.

Also, it's actually pretty easy to mess with Android and get it un-googled. Google don't make most Android phones, so there's less hardware-level enforcement of rules, and more independent alternatives. This is less so for Apple devices. If Apple decides to do something you don't like to your phone, you are SOL; you can only accept it or ditch Apple and switch to Android/something else.

> "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone"

Well, technically this is still true. Files you are putting to iCloud by yourself voluntarily are not staying in your iPhone in the first hand. Everything which is against this, is only speculation currently.

Except that this is all about analysing files that are not on iCloud, but on the device. So what is on your phone is now being reported to people who might decide to trash your life. Hardly "staying on your iPhone".

That is not true if you read the technical details. Scan applies for files (and only for those) which are prepared to be uploaded into the cloud.

If you don't trust that, that is another story. System is full black box.

Yes, but it happens on your iPhone. So what happens on your iPhone isn't staying on your iPhone like they said it would.

So when I said:

Am I missing something more than "but it's happening on-device!"?

Your answer is "no".

I think you're deliberately missing the point here.

It's not whether it happens on-device, off-device, in the cloud, in the tubes, or anywhere.

It's that Apple said that they would not do this, and now they're doing this. You can make technical quibbles that what they promised was slightly different to what they're doing, but they're irrelevant. The core promise of "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone" is being broken. It's that breaking of the promise that people are angry about. Does that make sense?

> Am I missing something more than "but it's happening on-device!"?

People think that this kind of capability was not there already, while it was. The simplest example case is normal iCloud sync. It scans your files and gets metadata, finally comparing to cloud to know which files to sync.

Other concern is, that this can be easily expanded to other kind of content, or whole device (outside of iCloud files). While, this sounds like valid concern, government who can force this change, could have forced it already. "Technology does not exist" is not valid excuse, never was. There are pretty expensive consults used by politics to prove these excuses otherwise.

I think Apple is the only major company who tries at least a little to resist Orwellian dystopia. Business model of other companies cannot allow resisting.

Are we talking about the major company that is happy to give access to all of their users content if the country (eg China) asks? If they were really serious about privacy they would not operate under those conditions.

Company can't operate in the country, if they don't follow country's rules. Sad truth. They should have left the China in that case. On their defense, they have given only information which is stored by their system, not actively increasing the collection of it or creation of backdoors.

Lineage and Linux exist and they're incredible. You've simply give up.

Lineage requires the Play Store to have paid apps or things I now pretty-much need for everyday life, at which point you've lost and it doesn't really matter whether it's Lineage or stock Android.

Linux is incredible... and still unusable for many everyday apps and workflows, and simply not an option for many people including myself. I've tried Linux distributions since 2011, they aren't there yet.

> Linux is incredible... and still unusable for many everyday apps and workflows, and simply not an option for many people including myself. I've tried Linux distributions since 2011, they aren't there yet.

I have actually totally dumped Windows recently (I have tried it past 5 years), because now Linux is getting very close for everything I need, and this same applies for many people. Can you give some examples which aren't there yet?

None of those things matter as much as a future where corporations don't have carte blanche over your information.

Support the continued freedom you enjoyed in your youth for future generations.