this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

The fans will lap it up and all those Apple YouTubers will gush about how Apple's new invention is the best invention ever. Apple has the advantage of owning a cult.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I disagree, I think Apple will do this feature with privacy/security in mind which Microsoft didn't do.

I absolutely don't like Apple but I think it's undeniable that they try to keep their OS secure. It's still a golden prison but at least it takes privacy fairly seriously.

Microsoft didn't seem to think about the challenges of that feature and it looks like a draft from an intern after a 1 hour meeting.

Obviously, something that scan a user screen has some implications that are hard to miss.

So yeah it's easy to point at people and say they are fanboys. But in this case the fanboys would be probably right in the sense that Apple already did better than Microsoft when it comes to privacy.

At the end of the day both are businesses that you shouldn't trust with your data but I would trust a lot more Apple than Microsoft for doing this right.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Well, yeah, but the baseline for outrage was with the feature existing, not with it being secure or not. There were a lot of people making the case that anybody who can open your computer because they have your password (abusive partners included) could then have a lot of access to your activity. That seems to carry over to this feature, too.

So I guess the question is, is there a "doing this right" version of this or not? You seem to implicitly be on the yes side, I'll be curious to find out if that's the majority.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There were a lot of people making the case that anybody who can open your computer because they have your password (abusive partners included) could then have a lot of access to your activity.

Isn't this true for any process with elevated privileges on your computer?

The valorant anticheat could just as well get all your data without you ever knowing it.

At the very least it's better to have that feature in a secure setup rather than the Microsoft approach where it seems like an afterthought at best.

You know I'd rather people be on Linux where you can check what is going on rather than blindly trusting Microsoft (or Apple) that they only do what they tell me they do on my system.

I'm just saying that it's not good to immediately assume what Apple will do will be as bad as Microsoft. They could take a bad idea and make it a slightly less bad idea.

Also security and privacy has very little value for the average consumer so it's naive to think the feature won't be used and useful to many people.

Most people give willingly their data to social networks so these kind of feature and their effect on privacy seems a bit pointless to me. If you don't like that kind of feature maybe a closed sourced system is not for you after all.

It's like people are worried about leaking data on what they do on their Windows computer all the while they already sent a ton of telemetry to Microsoft for years. Nvidia will happily scan all the apps you start for troubleshooting purposes.

Every little bit helps but I really think using windows and asking for your privacy to be respected is strange.

Windows 11 was already a privacy nightmare before this feature was tested.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Well, no, you can't ask the Valorant anticheat what the computer's user was doing three days ago. They could be risking a massive lawsuit by also monitoring what you do, but it's reasonable to assume they don't, and even if they could they would have the data, not your boss or your partner.

But it's interesting to see the framing shift from "can't trust corporations to do what they say they're doing" to "normal users have no use for privacy anyway". That's the fascinating part for me, the places where PR and branding change the framing. The features themselves are whatever. I don't like them, personally, but we'll see where it goes. It's the messaging that fascinates me.