Yes, #Apple has decided to opt everyone on iOS 18 in to “Enhanced Visual Search” to identify landmarks in pictures and that is a bad thing (ask me before you do something like that, Apple). But also no, this doesn’t mean that your iPhone sends all your pictures to Apple when this feature is enabled, as some clickbait posts/articles imply. It sends vector data that allows a pseudonymous match so the iPhone can add metadata on landmarks. See https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/homomorphic-encryption for more technical details.
Does this mean you can trust Apple? Hell, no! I disabled this “feature” the moment I first heard about it. But I will also dig a bit deeper to better understand what exactly they (claim to) are doing because that helps me in making informed choices. And sharing what I found hopefully helps you too! Too many toots and articles in my timeline reduced this to “Apple bad!1!!” without giving more details.
@jwildeboer Thank you *very* much for this!
I’ve grown sick and tired of moral outrage despite the lack of sufficient knowledge about something and all too often even without the desire to obtain that knowledge.
It’s why I had to comment about it the other day and even used a quote from the blog article that started the current “Apple bad!1!!” outrage.
https://mastodon.social/@RecoveredExpert/113738066883876545
@jwildeboer
People complain about how in politics facts are been being replaced by mere opinions but doing the same outside politics. Things aren’t wrong just b/c the “other group” is doing it.
A reasonable opinion needs sufficient knowledge. Without knowledge one can’t reason about something and hence should probably not make statements about it.
@jwildeboer This reminds me of something Hannah Ahrendt once said in a political/societal context:
»The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.«