Half of homeless LGBTQ youth in one study said they feared that expressing their LGBTQ+ identity to family members would lead to them being evicted, and a large percentage of homeless LGBTQ+ youth were forced to leave their homes due to their sexual orientation or gender. Outing youth who are exploring their sexual orientation or gender in ways their parents may not approve of has disastrous consequences. In addition, giving parents more information about a child’s online activity, without first allowing the child to report it themselves, can lead to mistreatment, especially in situations involving LGBTQ+ children or those in abusive households. Parents are, unfortunately, more likely to be the producers of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) than are strangers. But the home and family are statistically the most likely sites of sexual assault, and a variety of research indicates that sexual abuse prevention and online safety education programs can’t assume parents are protective. Of course, the vast majority of parents have a child’s best interests at heart. Research Shows Parents Are A Bigger Danger for Children than StrangersĪpple’s notification scheme also does little to address the real danger in many many cases. But a well-designed system could meet the needs of younger users, without violating privacy expectations. A more robust reporting feature would require real work, and a good intake system. Apple is offering the worst of both worlds: the company inserts its scanning tool into the private relationships between parents and their children, and between children and their friends looking for “explicit” material, while ignoring a powerful method for handling the issue. Instead, it treats children as victims of technology, rather than as users. Creating a better reporting system like this would put users in control-and children are users.īut Apple’s plan doesn’t help with that. A recent study by the Center for Democracy and Technology finds that user reporting through online reporting mechanisms is effective in detecting “problematic content on E2EE services, including abusive and harassing messages, spam, mis- and disinformation, and CSAM.” And, when given the choice to use online tools to do so, versus reporting to a caregiver offline, they overwhelmingly prefer using online tools. Kids do experience bad behavior online-and they want to report it. But it’s important to remember that Apple could change these protections down the road-and it’s not hard for a Family Sharing plan organizer to create a child account and force (or convince) anyone, child or not, to use it, easily enabling spying on non-children.Ĭreating a better reporting system would put users in control-and children are users. The feature requires an opt-in on the part of the parent on the Family Sharing plan it allows the child account to decide not to send or receive the image and it’s only applicable to Messages users that are designated as children. The Messages photo scanning feature has three limitations meant to protect users. Children Need In-App Abuse Reporting Tools Instead
The system also scans photos of users between 13 and 17 years old, but only warns the user that they are sending or receiving an explicit photo, not the parents. If the algorithm determines that the photo contains “sexually explicit” material, it will offer the user a choice: don’t receive or send the photo, and nothing happens or choose to receive or send the photo, and the parent account on the Family Sharing plan will be notified. In theory, the feature works like this: when photos are sent via Messages between users who are under a certain age (13), those photos will be scanned by a machine learning algorithm. TELL APPLE: DON'T SCAN OUR PHONES How Messages Scanning Works It both opens a security hole in Messages, and ignores the reality of where abuse most often happens, how dangerous communications occur, and what young people actually want to feel safe online. But scanning and flagging Messages images will, unfortunately, create serious potential for danger to children and partners in abusive households. And it’s clear that there are no easy answers when it comes to child endangerment. And when such promises are broken, it inevitably opens the door to other harms that’s what makes breaking encryption so insidious.Īpple’s goals are laudable: protecting children from strangers who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limiting the spread of child sexual abuse material. One of the plans-scanning photos sent to and from child accounts in Messages-breaks Apple’s promise to offer end-to-end encryption in messaging.
This month, Apple announced several new features under the auspices of expanding its protections for young people, at least two of which seriously walk back the company’s longstanding commitment to protecting user privacy.
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