This is an article from almost a year ago, last edited July 3, 2025...

> Because the photos and videos are analyzed on your child's device, Apple doesn't receive an indication that nudity was detected and doesn't get access to the photos or videos as a result.

Apropos of nothing, I really don't love the construction of this reassurance. This is not actually a reasoned-through guarantee, it's just two things that happen to be true at the same time. But the latter could change at any point, on-device processing does not preclude the device notifying Apple about what it saw.

The backdrop to this is a story from 2023 in which Apple attempted to do this and faced backlash. This received significant coverage worldwide at the time.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-scanning-csam-commun...

Yeah, it's clear to see that they'd want to get in front of something like that happening again. My point though is that the pull quote I highlighted is a flimsy reassurance because "it all happens on the device" does not at all prevent "Apple knowing about it," yet the sentence is constructed in a way that (tricks?) people into thinking it would.

And since then, we've seen major companies pressured into instead ripping out E2E encryption from public and governmental child safety concerns.

But why would they want to be notified. Seems like this is the best case scenario for them. They’re taking action against the problem and at the same time cannot be approached to break their clients privacy. The only thing I can imagine is a government entity making them do it.

Sure, what I meant is "without actually taking a stance on what the article is about and opinions on Apple's feature aside, I dislike the particular placation presented within"

Pausing seems more accurate. Sounds like a nice feature and if you can turn it off then no downside.

I truly don't understand why our society is so hung up on naked bodies.

What might be the impact on battery life?

If it lasts longer than 4 hours, contact the apple genius bar.

I wasn't looking for your take here, iPhone.

as in, like, freezing so you get to see it longer?

TFA says it pauses when it detects nudity on your end, not the other end. You probably know what you look like nude.

It looks like you can click through it, so you can still have your sexy time. Based on the description, it seems like its intended to prevent accidents, which seems ok to me.

Look how far we've regressed. Forty years ago if the phone company said it was going to spy on conversations and halt phone sex but don't worry because you can always choose to resume it, we'd never have accepted that.

Is privacy a concern if the monitoring is locally processed?

Could the phone company have seen your junk? Or just heard the way you describe it?

That distinction isn't important. We could take it for granted that our conversations wouldn't be analyzed for sexually explicit content, and then companies like Apple normalized the opposite. We hadn't yet been fooled by "think of the children".