There’s no difference - all cloud services that aren’t encrypting your data is subject to the same thing. Dropbox could do the same thing tomorrow. If we’re talking about hypotheticals any vendor that handles your unencrypted files can do this now.

You’re not understanding. Dropbox already does scan your files and I’m comparing Apples actions explicitly to that fact. I’m pointing out that people don’t care about that because you’re literally, voluntarily, giving Dropbox your files. Here, Apple is controlling your phone to tattle on you at an OS level (yes, I know, Apple says you need to turn on iCloud Photos for this to run but the precedent is the problem).

> Dropbox already does scan your files

> people don’t care about that because you’re literally, voluntarily, giving Dropbox your files.

Correct and I agree. I don’t upload my most personal photos to Dropbox for this very specific reason. In fact I stopped using Dropbox when Condi Rice joined the board because she lacks good sense and doesn’t respect civil rights. See ‘The Patriot Act’ and ‘the Invasion of Afghanistan’. It was easy to stop using Dropbox because the alternatives were vast. Apple has me very purposely locked in to this scheme to where the alternatives are a huge transition and compromise on privacy no matter where I turn.

big difference: you're now paying for the compute load, instead of the cloud providers, for something that offers no direct benefit to you and will most likely betray you in unforeseen ways in the future (especially in less 'free' countries)

Why did you think you owned a closed source device?

Open Source fanatics are the worst. Even if all the software on your phone was Open Source, you wouldn’t have the mental bandwidth to ever verify you trust it. You’re just farming out your trust to a different set of people and hoping they’re more trustworthy than those with closed source. At best this MAY be reasonable because of incentive alignment but that’s super weak.

Not to mention the meaning of ownership is completely unrelated to ability to view the designs of a given object. I think I own the fan currently blowing air at me without ever having seen a schematic for its controls circuitry just fine and everyone for all of history has pretty much felt the same.

That's because your fan is hardware and your phone is software. The hardware in your phone is only 1% of what your phone is.

The point is it's hard to hide your evil plans in daylight. Either you trust Apple or your don't. Same with Microsoft's telemetry, they wrote the whole OS, if they were evil they have 10000 easier ways to do it.

All Apple has to do is lie, you'll never know.