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Comment by SilverRed

4 years ago

No one here has a problem with the worst criminals being taken out. The problem is the scope creep that always comes after.

In 2021 and 2020 we saw people being arrested for planning/promoting anti lockdown protests. Not for actually participating but for simply posting about it. The scope of what "harmful content" is is infinite. You might agree that police do need to take action against these people but surely you can see how the scope creeped from literal terrorists and pedophiles to edgy facebook mums and how that could move even further to simple criticisms of the government or religion.

It's difficult to say how we draw the line to make sure horrible crimes go punished while still protecting reasonable privacy and freedom. I'm guessing apples justification here is that they are not sending your photos to police but simply checking them against known bad hashes and if you are not a pedophile, there will be no matches and none of your data will have been exposed.

We also saw the police query "check-in" databases which were pitched to the public as "for contact-tracing purposes only". Scope creep is inevitable.

We also saw HN shadow banning entire IP CIDR blocks because they didn’t like argument against fleeting CDC guidance that was put forth or the Chinese lab origin theory in 2020. You can’t register from these CIDR blocks. If you had an account before the comments would just end up in a black hole. Dang can explain.