circuitfarmer , 10 months ago

Scanning everyone’s photos is a clear invasion of user privacy.

Not scanning everyone’s photos means people retain privacy, and bad actors may then have content that we, as a society, agree they should not have.

These two things are at odds, so any solution is a compromise (or at least, a choice of one thing over another), and either will always be controversial. It’s not just photo scanning that falls into this, but also things like VPN usage – really, virtually anything that lets users retain privacy could also be used for nefarious purposes.

Personally, I don’t want to live in a world where everyone’s photos are scanned, because I am vehemently opposed to that level of surveillance and believe it would lead to profit motives (e.g. better ad targeting). I do hope there is another way to curb CSAM content, but ultimately I don’t see mass surveillance as viable.