7 ms·

Teens are also children. Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. This is very creepy behavior from Apple

by vimy 5y ago

Teens are also children. Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. This is very creepy behavior from Apple. Edit: I'm talking about this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=...

nerdponx 5y ago
> Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. Some people might disagree with you. There are people out there who are revolted by the "obviously okay" case of 2 fully-consenting teenagers sending each other nude pics, without any coercion, social pressure, etc. Not to mention all the gray areas and "obviously not okay" combinations of ages, circumstances, number of people involved, etc.
- slownews45 5y ago
  It will be the parents who are deciding this - particularly if they are buying these phones. If parents don't like this feature, they can buy a lineage OS type phone. If parents do they will buy this type of phone for their kids.
  - philistine 5y ago
    Big correction: it will be the other kids’ parent who will decide for your kid. Apple will give your children’s picture to the other kid’s parents. That’s terrifying.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      What a lie - I'm really noticing an overlap between folks fighting this type of stuff (which as a parent I want) and folks just lying horribly. "if a child attempts to send an explicit photo, they’ll be warned before the photo is sent. Parents can also receive a message if the child chooses to send the photo anyway." - https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/new-apple-technology-will-warn-parents-and-children-about-sexually-explicit-photos-in-messages/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/new-apple-technology-will-... So this gives kids a heads up that they shouldn't send it, and that if they do, their parent will be notified. So that's me in case you are not reading this clearly. Now yes, if someone is SENDING my child porn from a non-child account, I as the parent will be notified. Great. If this is terrifying - that's a bit scary! HN is going a bit off the rails these days. Allow me to make a prediction - users are going to like this - it will INCREASE their trust in apple in terms of a company trying to keep them and their family safe. I just looked it up - Apple is literally the #1 brand globally supposedly in 2021. So they are doing the right thing in customers minds so far.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Nobody's lying. Consider the scenario where the sender is an Android user and the recipient is an iOS user.
        dwaite 5y ago
        Could you elaborate on what you think would happen in this case, vs. an iOS user sending an image to another iOS user?
        jlokier 5y ago
        Presumably the sender won't get a notification that the picture they are about to send will be flagged, but it will be flagged by the recipient's device automatically. Neither participant will have the opportunity to be warned in advance and avoid getting flagged.
        slownews45 5y ago
        The claim that if you buy an apple phone that it will notify the OTHER kids parents is a flat out lie. Yes, android users sending porn to kids will be flagged by apple devices if the kid has one. My point, parents may like this.
        slownews45 5y ago
        "it will be the other kids’ parent who will decide for your kid. Apple will give your children’s picture to the other kid’s parents." This is an absolute falsehood. Literally a total flat lie. Have people not read the paper? Apple does not give android phone users the child porn. They block it on device. So no, it will not be the other children's parents who will decide it will be me if my child is sending it. And if someone sends my child a photo of child porn etc, then apple will block it and will notify me and that is also fine - if you are sending my child child porn - then I have a right to know - and I will pursue you aggressively as almost any parent will I think. The idea that apple is doing something wrong here is ridiculous. The lying about what apple is doing is also ridiculous.
- thomastjeffery 5y ago
  That's entirely GP's point: preferring to cater to those people affects the rest of us in a way we find detrimental.
Klonoar 5y ago
You describe it as if Apple's got people in some room checking each photo. It's some code that notifies their parents in certain situations. ;P I know several parents in just my extended circle alone that would welcome the feature, so... I just don't think I agree with this statement. These parents already resort to other methods to try and monitor their kids but it's increasingly (or already) impossible to do so. I suppose we should also take issue with Apple letting parents watch their kids location...?
strictnein 5y ago
This is not how the system works at all.
- vimy 5y ago
  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=... What am I reading wrong?
  - strictnein 5y ago
    Already answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28079919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28079919
    - Bud 5y ago
      Answered incorrectly. You need to read the rest of the article.
hb0ss 5y ago
Children as defined by Apple differs per legal region, for the US it is set to 13 years or younger. Also, your parents need to have added your account to the iCloud family for the feature to work.
Closi 5y ago
That's not what this solution is doing, it's checking a hash of the photo against a hash of known offending content. If someone sends nude pics there is still no way to tell that it's a nude pic.
- randcraw 5y ago
  Nude pic ID is routine online. Facebook developed this capability over 5 years ago and employs it liberally today, as do many other net service providers.
- mrits 5y ago
  Not true. We don't know how the fuzzy hash is working. It's very likely a lot of nudes would fall in the threshold Apple has set.
- krrrh 5y ago
  That’s only the first part of what was announced and addressed in the article. The other part is on-device scanning for nude pics a child is intending to send using machine learning and securely notifying the child, and then parents within the family account. The alert that the kids get by itself will probably be enough to stop a lot of them from sending the pic in the first place.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    I'm a parent. It's weird seeing HN push against this. This sounds like a feature I'd like
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - philistine 5y ago
      I agree with you in principle, but I also know that kids will soon find methods of sharing that defeat any scans. Other apps and ephemeral websites can be used to escape Apple’s squeaky-clean version of the world.
Spooky23 5y ago
It would be if that were what they were doing. They are not.
- Bud 5y ago
  Yes, it is, and you need to read the entire article.
  - spiderice 5y ago
    I think you're both partially right. > In these new processes, if an account held by a child under 13 wishes to send an image that the on-device machine learning classifier determines is a sexually explicit image, a notification will pop up, telling the under-13 child that their parent will be notified of this content. If the under-13 child still chooses to send the content, they have to accept that the “parent” will be notified, and the image will be irrevocably saved to the parental controls section of their phone for the parent to view later. For users between the ages of 13 and 17, a similar warning notification will pop up, though without the parental notification. This specifically says that it will not notify the parents of teens, as GGP claims. So GP is right that Apple isn't doing what GGP claimed. However I still think you might be right that GP didn't read the full article and just got lucky. Lol.
krrrh 5y ago
Parents do have a legal and moral responsibility to check on their children’s behaviour, and that includes teens. It’s somewhat analogous to a teacher telling parents about similar behaviour taking place at school. I suspect a lot of how people feel about this will come down to whether they have kids or not.
- anthk 5y ago
  I don't know about your country but in mine in Europe teens have privacy rights OVER their parents' paranoia. That includes secrecy in private communications and OFC privacy within their own data in smartphones.
dhosek 5y ago
The fact that teens are children means that if, say a 16-yo sends a nude selfie to their s.o., they've just committed a felony (distributing child pornography) that can have lifelong consequences (thanks to hysterical laws about sex offender registries, both kids could end up having to register as sex offenders for the rest of their life and will be identified as having committed a crime that involved a minor. Few if any of the registries would say more than this and anyone who looks in the registry will be led to believe that they molested a child and not shared a selfie or had one shared with them). The laws may not be just or correct, but they are the current state of the world. Parents need to talk to their kids about this sort of thing, and this seems one of the less intrusive way for them to discover that there's an issue. If it were automatically shared with law enforcement? That would be a big problem (and a guarantee that my kids don't get access to a device until they're 18), but I'm not ready¹ to be up in arms about this yet. 1. I reserve the right to change my mind as things are revealed/developed.
- anthk 5y ago
  > The laws may not be just or correct, but they are the current state of the world America, not Europe. Or Japan.
- philistine 5y ago
  I’d argue that the problem of minors declared sex offenders for nude pictures has reached a critical mass that scares me. At this point, sex offenders of truly vile things can hide by saying that they are on a sex offender registry because of underage selfies. And I think most people will believe them.
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    I worked with someone that claimed this, years ago. And they were still young enough that I believed them.
  - joombaga 5y ago
    Am I missing something? Why would they say they're sex offenders at all?
xondono 5y ago
Call me crazy, but if your 13yo is sending nudes, I think that as a parent you want to know that. Current society is pushing a lot of adult behavior into kids, and they don’t always understand the consequences of their actions. Parents can’t inform their kids if they aren’t aware.
- fortuna86 5y ago
  I wouldn't give a 13 year old an iphone, but I guess that makes me odd.
  - rudian 5y ago
    Yeah good luck with that.
- emadabdulrahim 5y ago
  Wanting to know as a parent, and the way Apple is going about this are two different issues. The government also wants to know about potential terrorist attacks. Why not scan all our phones for all kinds of data to protect innocent people from being killed by mass shootings? That's nonsense. I'm saying that and I'm deeply locked in Apple's ecosystem. Which is pissing me off.
- Guest19023892 5y ago
  > Parents can’t inform their kids if they aren’t aware Why not inform your children of the potential consequences when giving them a phone? Why do you need Apple to notify you of inappropriate behavior before having that conversation? That's like waiting until you find a pregnancy test in the garbage before talking to your children about sex.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Yes, that’s great, but that’s not how kids work, especially 13yo..
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Furthermore, if Apple is deliberately, by design resending them to additional people beyond the addressee, as a feature it markets to the people that will be receiving them, that seems to...raise problematic issues.
- dwaite 5y ago
  Who said Apple re-sends pictures?

by vimy 5y ago

nerdponx 5y ago

> Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Let alone tell their parents. Some people might disagree with you. There are people out there who are revolted by the "obviously okay" case of 2 fully-consenting teenagers sending each other nude pics, without any coercion, social pressure, etc. Not to mention all the gray areas and "obviously not okay" combinations of ages, circumstances, number of people involved, etc.

slownews45 5y ago
It will be the parents who are deciding this - particularly if they are buying these phones. If parents don't like this feature, they can buy a lineage OS type phone. If parents do they will buy this type of phone for their kids.
- philistine 5y ago
  Big correction: it will be the other kids’ parent who will decide for your kid. Apple will give your children’s picture to the other kid’s parents. That’s terrifying.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    What a lie - I'm really noticing an overlap between folks fighting this type of stuff (which as a parent I want) and folks just lying horribly. "if a child attempts to send an explicit photo, they’ll be warned before the photo is sent. Parents can also receive a message if the child chooses to send the photo anyway." - https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/new-apple-technology-will-warn-parents-and-children-about-sexually-explicit-photos-in-messages/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/new-apple-technology-will-... So this gives kids a heads up that they shouldn't send it, and that if they do, their parent will be notified. So that's me in case you are not reading this clearly. Now yes, if someone is SENDING my child porn from a non-child account, I as the parent will be notified. Great. If this is terrifying - that's a bit scary! HN is going a bit off the rails these days. Allow me to make a prediction - users are going to like this - it will INCREASE their trust in apple in terms of a company trying to keep them and their family safe. I just looked it up - Apple is literally the #1 brand globally supposedly in 2021. So they are doing the right thing in customers minds so far.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Nobody's lying. Consider the scenario where the sender is an Android user and the recipient is an iOS user.
      - dwaite 5y ago
        Could you elaborate on what you think would happen in this case, vs. an iOS user sending an image to another iOS user?
        jlokier 5y ago
        Presumably the sender won't get a notification that the picture they are about to send will be flagged, but it will be flagged by the recipient's device automatically. Neither participant will have the opportunity to be warned in advance and avoid getting flagged.
        slownews45 5y ago
        The claim that if you buy an apple phone that it will notify the OTHER kids parents is a flat out lie. Yes, android users sending porn to kids will be flagged by apple devices if the kid has one. My point, parents may like this.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        "it will be the other kids’ parent who will decide for your kid. Apple will give your children’s picture to the other kid’s parents." This is an absolute falsehood. Literally a total flat lie. Have people not read the paper? Apple does not give android phone users the child porn. They block it on device. So no, it will not be the other children's parents who will decide it will be me if my child is sending it. And if someone sends my child a photo of child porn etc, then apple will block it and will notify me and that is also fine - if you are sending my child child porn - then I have a right to know - and I will pursue you aggressively as almost any parent will I think. The idea that apple is doing something wrong here is ridiculous. The lying about what apple is doing is also ridiculous.
thomastjeffery 5y ago
That's entirely GP's point: preferring to cater to those people affects the rest of us in a way we find detrimental.

Klonoar 5y ago

You describe it as if Apple's got people in some room checking each photo. It's some code that notifies their parents in certain situations. ;P I know several parents in just my extended circle alone that would welcome the feature, so... I just don't think I agree with this statement. These parents already resort to other methods to try and monitor their kids but it's increasingly (or already) impossible to do so. I suppose we should also take issue with Apple letting parents watch their kids location...?

strictnein 5y ago

This is not how the system works at all.

vimy 5y ago
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8DYv9hWUAksPO8?format=jpg&name=... What am I reading wrong?
- strictnein 5y ago
  Already answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28079919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28079919
  - Bud 5y ago
    Answered incorrectly. You need to read the rest of the article.

hb0ss 5y ago

Children as defined by Apple differs per legal region, for the US it is set to 13 years or younger. Also, your parents need to have added your account to the iCloud family for the feature to work.

Closi 5y ago

That's not what this solution is doing, it's checking a hash of the photo against a hash of known offending content. If someone sends nude pics there is still no way to tell that it's a nude pic.

randcraw 5y ago
Nude pic ID is routine online. Facebook developed this capability over 5 years ago and employs it liberally today, as do many other net service providers.
mrits 5y ago
Not true. We don't know how the fuzzy hash is working. It's very likely a lot of nudes would fall in the threshold Apple has set.
krrrh 5y ago
That’s only the first part of what was announced and addressed in the article. The other part is on-device scanning for nude pics a child is intending to send using machine learning and securely notifying the child, and then parents within the family account. The alert that the kids get by itself will probably be enough to stop a lot of them from sending the pic in the first place.
- slownews45 5y ago
  I'm a parent. It's weird seeing HN push against this. This sounds like a feature I'd like
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - philistine 5y ago
    I agree with you in principle, but I also know that kids will soon find methods of sharing that defeat any scans. Other apps and ephemeral websites can be used to escape Apple’s squeaky-clean version of the world.

Spooky23 5y ago

It would be if that were what they were doing. They are not.

Bud 5y ago
Yes, it is, and you need to read the entire article.
- spiderice 5y ago
  I think you're both partially right. > In these new processes, if an account held by a child under 13 wishes to send an image that the on-device machine learning classifier determines is a sexually explicit image, a notification will pop up, telling the under-13 child that their parent will be notified of this content. If the under-13 child still chooses to send the content, they have to accept that the “parent” will be notified, and the image will be irrevocably saved to the parental controls section of their phone for the parent to view later. For users between the ages of 13 and 17, a similar warning notification will pop up, though without the parental notification. This specifically says that it will not notify the parents of teens, as GGP claims. So GP is right that Apple isn't doing what GGP claimed. However I still think you might be right that GP didn't read the full article and just got lucky. Lol.

krrrh 5y ago

Parents do have a legal and moral responsibility to check on their children’s behaviour, and that includes teens. It’s somewhat analogous to a teacher telling parents about similar behaviour taking place at school. I suspect a lot of how people feel about this will come down to whether they have kids or not.

anthk 5y ago
I don't know about your country but in mine in Europe teens have privacy rights OVER their parents' paranoia. That includes secrecy in private communications and OFC privacy within their own data in smartphones.

dhosek 5y ago

The fact that teens are children means that if, say a 16-yo sends a nude selfie to their s.o., they've just committed a felony (distributing child pornography) that can have lifelong consequences (thanks to hysterical laws about sex offender registries, both kids could end up having to register as sex offenders for the rest of their life and will be identified as having committed a crime that involved a minor. Few if any of the registries would say more than this and anyone who looks in the registry will be led to believe that they molested a child and not shared a selfie or had one shared with them). The laws may not be just or correct, but they are the current state of the world. Parents need to talk to their kids about this sort of thing, and this seems one of the less intrusive way for them to discover that there's an issue. If it were automatically shared with law enforcement? That would be a big problem (and a guarantee that my kids don't get access to a device until they're 18), but I'm not ready¹ to be up in arms about this yet. 1. I reserve the right to change my mind as things are revealed/developed.

anthk 5y ago
> The laws may not be just or correct, but they are the current state of the world America, not Europe. Or Japan.
philistine 5y ago
I’d argue that the problem of minors declared sex offenders for nude pictures has reached a critical mass that scares me. At this point, sex offenders of truly vile things can hide by saying that they are on a sex offender registry because of underage selfies. And I think most people will believe them.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  I worked with someone that claimed this, years ago. And they were still young enough that I believed them.
- joombaga 5y ago
  Am I missing something? Why would they say they're sex offenders at all?

xondono 5y ago

Call me crazy, but if your 13yo is sending nudes, I think that as a parent you want to know that. Current society is pushing a lot of adult behavior into kids, and they don’t always understand the consequences of their actions. Parents can’t inform their kids if they aren’t aware.

fortuna86 5y ago
I wouldn't give a 13 year old an iphone, but I guess that makes me odd.
- rudian 5y ago
  Yeah good luck with that.
emadabdulrahim 5y ago
Wanting to know as a parent, and the way Apple is going about this are two different issues. The government also wants to know about potential terrorist attacks. Why not scan all our phones for all kinds of data to protect innocent people from being killed by mass shootings? That's nonsense. I'm saying that and I'm deeply locked in Apple's ecosystem. Which is pissing me off.
Guest19023892 5y ago
> Parents can’t inform their kids if they aren’t aware Why not inform your children of the potential consequences when giving them a phone? Why do you need Apple to notify you of inappropriate behavior before having that conversation? That's like waiting until you find a pregnancy test in the garbage before talking to your children about sex.
- xondono 5y ago
  Yes, that’s great, but that’s not how kids work, especially 13yo..

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Apple has no business checking if they send or receive nude pics. Furthermore, if Apple is deliberately, by design resending them to additional people beyond the addressee, as a feature it markets to the people that will be receiving them, that seems to...raise problematic issues.

dwaite 5y ago
Who said Apple re-sends pictures?