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Another possibility (or way to look at it) is that it worked poorly enough, and it was poorly received enough, that the internal factions within Apple that oppo

Another possibility (or way to look at it) is that it worked poorly enough, and it was poorly received enough, that the internal factions within Apple that opposed it had enough leverage to kill it. Sometimes, the right way to kill a project (politically) is to let it publicly fail. Killing a project before it fails requires much more of a fight. It could also mean that the very public failure of this project gave Apple leverage over whichever spooks were pushing for it in the first place.

zionic 5y ago
>Sometimes, the right way to kill a project (politically) is to let it publicly fail. I feel this is definitely true most of the time, but in this case the cost to their public image/perception among the tech crowd was so high it was a mistake.
- klodolph 5y ago
  It may have been a mistake for Apple as a company to make this decision, but I think we can understand why the individuals within Apple might choose to let decisions like this play out and fail in public, even if they know it is going to fail.
  - ksec 5y ago
    Well Craig Federighi seems to be happy with it. Their software engineers leads of the features seems to be happy with it. i.e I dont believe there were significant objection to the feature within Apple. At least not those in power. And that is why they went with it. The objection obviously came later after it was reviewed to the public.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      > The objection obviously came later after it was reviewed to the public. Why is this obvious? Normally, when you have an objection to a company policy, you voice those objections in private to people within the company. This seems "obvious" to me, but to explain--(1) it's against company policy and often considered a fireable offense, (2) employees have an interest in presenting a united front, (3) those who want the project to fail publicly want it to happen without interference from inside the company.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      > Craig Federighi seems to be happy with it. There is a big difference between happy with it and not unhappy enough to quit publicly when part of your job is to spread koolaid and look happy. If i were against something like this, but not powerful enough to squash it (especially if a gov had a hand in getting it pushed through), then i'd make sure to do a press tour and get it in every newspaper for all the wrong reasons, while making an all/nothing stance to torpedo the project. I can think of no other reason beyond utter incompetence why they'd announce it how they did. Apple is known for being secretive, but why did they do a press interview and say "sure other 3-letter gov agencies may need to add to the illegal photos database in the future" unless you wanted to really make sure the project would fail? Why else announce it in the same press release as scanning messages for similar content? It seems like the rollout was designed to be as suspicious as possible tbh.
      - notriddle 5y ago
        Never assume 4D chess when simple incompetence can do the job, because 4D chess is rare, and tends to fail when it confronts the unexpected. If you were trying to sink the project this way, how would it work out if some other, unrelated scandal had popped up and distracted the general public?
        vineyardmike 5y ago
        > If I were trying to sink the project this way This should be re-written to say > If [i were not influencial enough to sink it internally, so i] were trying to sink the project [through bad publicity] Therefore, the answer to your question is "darn, it didn't work. that sucks but at least i tried". Also... > Never assume 4D chess when simple incompetence can do the job In this context, its very likely that a government is somewhat behind it. We know the FBI and apple didn't get along. We know apple has been doing things quid-pro-quo for china to stay on their good side. So it seems like we're already sitting at a 4d chess board, but no one is sure who's playing. If a government says you have to do X on the DL, and you don't want to because its bad, then a logical solution is to get general population + news media to say "X is bad! We really hope X doesn't happen." Because then its easy to show the government why you can't do X.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  >public image/perception among the tech crowd I don't feel like Apple cares at all about perception among the tech crowd. So many things they champion draw the ire of us.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> it could also mean that the very public failure of this project gave Apple leverage over whichever spooks were pushing for it in the first place. This is my guess. I imagine it went something like this. Congressman: "So tim, FBI talked to me and want some help. Please find a way to check all pictures on iphone" Tim: "or no?" C: "We'll make it worth your while" T: "This goes against our marketing and history, it'll take a really big push. My team says we can manage X but we need to work with CSAM agency to handle optics. C: "Great!" T: "I was right, the public hates it and doesn't care about children, we're going back to our privacy stance in marketing because the backlash would out-due the political reward. We'll throw you under the bus if you push again on this. We totally want to help for real and not just because politics is a game and we have to play, but this cost is too high, even you can see this backlash and recognize we can't go threw with it. BTW thanks for giving us excuse to hire a few new expensive ML scientists from google or wherever. They got to write some nice papers." C:"Gotcha. See you next week for gulf when we try again at something new? There is this israeli company i want you to meet"
- tomc1985 5y ago
  We all know who it was -- NCMEC was getting on Apple's case because their CSAM reporting numbers were orders of magnitude lower than the other big tech companies. Someone in NCMEC upper management even wrote Apple nauseatingly perky congratulatory letters celebrating Apple for actually trying to save the children, and calling detractors braying mules or somesuch.

zionic 5y ago

>Sometimes, the right way to kill a project (politically) is to let it publicly fail. I feel this is definitely true most of the time, but in this case the cost to their public image/perception among the tech crowd was so high it was a mistake.

klodolph 5y ago
It may have been a mistake for Apple as a company to make this decision, but I think we can understand why the individuals within Apple might choose to let decisions like this play out and fail in public, even if they know it is going to fail.
- ksec 5y ago
  Well Craig Federighi seems to be happy with it. Their software engineers leads of the features seems to be happy with it. i.e I dont believe there were significant objection to the feature within Apple. At least not those in power. And that is why they went with it. The objection obviously came later after it was reviewed to the public.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    > The objection obviously came later after it was reviewed to the public. Why is this obvious? Normally, when you have an objection to a company policy, you voice those objections in private to people within the company. This seems "obvious" to me, but to explain--(1) it's against company policy and often considered a fireable offense, (2) employees have an interest in presenting a united front, (3) those who want the project to fail publicly want it to happen without interference from inside the company.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > Craig Federighi seems to be happy with it. There is a big difference between happy with it and not unhappy enough to quit publicly when part of your job is to spread koolaid and look happy. If i were against something like this, but not powerful enough to squash it (especially if a gov had a hand in getting it pushed through), then i'd make sure to do a press tour and get it in every newspaper for all the wrong reasons, while making an all/nothing stance to torpedo the project. I can think of no other reason beyond utter incompetence why they'd announce it how they did. Apple is known for being secretive, but why did they do a press interview and say "sure other 3-letter gov agencies may need to add to the illegal photos database in the future" unless you wanted to really make sure the project would fail? Why else announce it in the same press release as scanning messages for similar content? It seems like the rollout was designed to be as suspicious as possible tbh.
    - notriddle 5y ago
      Never assume 4D chess when simple incompetence can do the job, because 4D chess is rare, and tends to fail when it confronts the unexpected. If you were trying to sink the project this way, how would it work out if some other, unrelated scandal had popped up and distracted the general public?
      - vineyardmike 5y ago
        > If I were trying to sink the project this way This should be re-written to say > If [i were not influencial enough to sink it internally, so i] were trying to sink the project [through bad publicity] Therefore, the answer to your question is "darn, it didn't work. that sucks but at least i tried". Also... > Never assume 4D chess when simple incompetence can do the job In this context, its very likely that a government is somewhat behind it. We know the FBI and apple didn't get along. We know apple has been doing things quid-pro-quo for china to stay on their good side. So it seems like we're already sitting at a 4d chess board, but no one is sure who's playing. If a government says you have to do X on the DL, and you don't want to because its bad, then a logical solution is to get general population + news media to say "X is bad! We really hope X doesn't happen." Because then its easy to show the government why you can't do X.
brokenmachine 5y ago
>public image/perception among the tech crowd I don't feel like Apple cares at all about perception among the tech crowd. So many things they champion draw the ire of us.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> it could also mean that the very public failure of this project gave Apple leverage over whichever spooks were pushing for it in the first place. This is my guess. I imagine it went something like this. Congressman: "So tim, FBI talked to me and want some help. Please find a way to check all pictures on iphone" Tim: "or no?" C: "We'll make it worth your while" T: "This goes against our marketing and history, it'll take a really big push. My team says we can manage X but we need to work with CSAM agency to handle optics. C: "Great!" T: "I was right, the public hates it and doesn't care about children, we're going back to our privacy stance in marketing because the backlash would out-due the political reward. We'll throw you under the bus if you push again on this. We totally want to help for real and not just because politics is a game and we have to play, but this cost is too high, even you can see this backlash and recognize we can't go threw with it. BTW thanks for giving us excuse to hire a few new expensive ML scientists from google or wherever. They got to write some nice papers." C:"Gotcha. See you next week for gulf when we try again at something new? There is this israeli company i want you to meet"

tomc1985 5y ago
We all know who it was -- NCMEC was getting on Apple's case because their CSAM reporting numbers were orders of magnitude lower than the other big tech companies. Someone in NCMEC upper management even wrote Apple nauseatingly perky congratulatory letters celebrating Apple for actually trying to save the children, and calling detractors braying mules or somesuch.