4 ms·

it's kind of silly how this is treated like some deeply technical issue. Apple's 'one of a trillion' claim is either true and the software is useless, because I

it's kind of silly how this is treated like some deeply technical issue. Apple's 'one of a trillion' claim is either true and the software is useless, because I'm pretty sure pedophiles can figure out what a watermark or a gaussian blur in paint net is, or it's imprecise and actually detects things which is the very thing that makes it dangerous to the public. It's a direct trade-off and the error tolerance of any such filter is the only thing that makes it useful so we can basically stop arguing about the depths of implementation details or how high the collision rate of the hashing algorithm is etc. If this thing is supposed to catch anyone it needs to be magnitudes more lenient than any of those minor faults.

734129837261 5y ago
Exactly right. The tech Apple uses can be one of two things: 1. It requires a perfect 1:1 match (their documentation says this is not the case); 2. Or it has some freedom in detecting a match, probably including a match with a certain percentage. If it's the former, it's completely useless. A watermark or a randomly chosen pixel with a slightly different hue and the hash would be completely different. So, it's not #1. It's going to be #2. And that's where it becomes dangerous. The government of the USA is going to look for child predators. The government of Saudi Arabia is going to track down known memes shared by atheists, and they will be put to death; heresy is a capital offence over there. And China will probably do their best to track down Uyghurs so they can make the process of elimination even easier. It's not like Apple hasn't given in to dictatorships in the past. This tech is absolutely going to kill people.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  What? Why would memes be on the CSAM list?
  - visarga 5y ago
    They got to scan for whatever the local law requires them to scan.
Ashanmaril 5y ago
> I'm pretty sure pedophiles can figure out what a watermark or a gaussian blur in paint net is, or it's imprecise and actually detects things which is the very thing that makes it dangerous to the public Or better yet, they can just not store their stuff on an iPhone. While meanwhile, millions of innocent people are have their photos scanned and risking being reported as a pedophile.

734129837261 5y ago

Exactly right. The tech Apple uses can be one of two things: 1. It requires a perfect 1:1 match (their documentation says this is not the case); 2. Or it has some freedom in detecting a match, probably including a match with a certain percentage. If it's the former, it's completely useless. A watermark or a randomly chosen pixel with a slightly different hue and the hash would be completely different. So, it's not #1. It's going to be #2. And that's where it becomes dangerous. The government of the USA is going to look for child predators. The government of Saudi Arabia is going to track down known memes shared by atheists, and they will be put to death; heresy is a capital offence over there. And China will probably do their best to track down Uyghurs so they can make the process of elimination even easier. It's not like Apple hasn't given in to dictatorships in the past. This tech is absolutely going to kill people.

endisneigh 5y ago
What? Why would memes be on the CSAM list?
- visarga 5y ago
  They got to scan for whatever the local law requires them to scan.

Ashanmaril 5y ago

> I'm pretty sure pedophiles can figure out what a watermark or a gaussian blur in paint net is, or it's imprecise and actually detects things which is the very thing that makes it dangerous to the public Or better yet, they can just not store their stuff on an iPhone. While meanwhile, millions of innocent people are have their photos scanned and risking being reported as a pedophile.