The more bothersome thing (to me) is client-side scanning. Apple is setting a precedent that allows any first-party manufacturer to work against the user's interests as long as there's a large enough common enemy. It should go without saying, but that's a horrible idea!
If Google were doing the same thing on their Pixel phones, I'd be slamming them equally as hard. It's simply depressing to watch a company claim they know best, while proceeding to use your phone to run their regulatory compliance code.
(Even if you took a picture to send to your doctor through an encrypted app, it just has to end up in the photo library to be cloud synced, unless you remember to hand delete it.)
The practical difference is nil. The fact of the matter is, either way, if you don't upload you won't be scanned, if you do upload you will be. End result is the same regardless of whether you use OneDrive, Box, Dropbox or Google Drive (who all implement CSAM scanning)
If Apple wants to run that code, they're welcome to do it on their own servers; they pay for the hardware, they decide what software it runs. I shouldn't have to waste my storage space on their NeuralHash model though. I shouldn't waste my CPU cycles on their regulatory compliance. Arguing anything else is paramount to saying that Apple owned your phone from the start, and if that's the case, then antitrust legislation can't come soon enough.
your compute and phone resources are already used for analytics and other things that you didn't explicitly tell the phone to do.
you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol
fact of the matter is, you're only scanned when you're using apple services.
I didn't know LineageOS sent analytics, it never showed up on Netguard. Curious!
If you think this is a dumb thing to argue about, then by all means; don't argue about it! If you're satisfied with your iPhone and convinced that Apple can do no wrong, then certainly don't let me get in your way. We're talking about the largest company in the world, though, and if you're unwilling to offer them a little criticism for objectively degrading the iPhone experience, then I don't see the point in discussing this.
> you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol
Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.
> Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.
Privacy is better preserved doing it on device compared to on their servers.
anyway, nothing more to discuss here.
It goes to show that Apple isn't afraid to undermine their own experience to implement adversarial software services. Combined with the way they "respect" the privacy of Chinese citizens, I don't think Apple actually cares about our privacy. It would seem that instead they're testing the waters for more radical changes[0], like using on-device machine learning to detect suicidal users or terrorists. And who's going to object when that happens, right?
[0] Source: the past century of US political discourse.