[talldayo]

It is a coverup. Apple is overtly and completely aware of the optics surrounding photo scanning - they know that an opt-in scheme cannot work as they found out previously.

Since they cannot convince users to enable this feature in good-faith, they are resorting to subterfuge. We know that Apple is vehement about pushing client-side scanning on users that do not want it, I do not believe for a second that this was a mistake or unintended behavior. If this was a bug then it would have been hotfixed immediately to prevent the unintended behavior from reaching any more phones than it already had.

[threeseed]

> they are resorting to subterfuge

This is illogical. If Apple wanted to engage in subterfuge they would simply compromise the OS.

When a company controls the entire stack either you trust everything they do. Or nothing.

[latexr]

Exactly. It is absolutely bonkers that people are claiming that Apple is trying to cover up something for which they have a settings toggle and public documentation.

[kemayo]

Yeah, we might quibble about what the default value of the toggle should be, but them adding settings for minor features like this is absolutely a good thing, and very much a sign that they're not trying to hide things.

If anything, the lesson Apple might take from this could be "adding the settings toggle was a bad idea, because nobody would have cared about this at all otherwise".