this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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I'll repost my comment from the other post:
For people who have not read the article:
Forbes states that there is no indication that this app can or will "phone home".
Its stated use is for other apps to scan an image they have access to find out what kind of thing it is (known as "classification"). For example, to find out if the picture you've been sent is a dick-pick so the app can blur it.
My understanding is that, if this is implemented correctly (a big 'if') this can be completely safe.
Apps requesting classification could be limited to only classifying files that they already have access to. Remember that android has a concept of "scoped storage" nowadays that let you restrict folder access. If this is the case, well it's no less safe than not having SafetyCore at all. It just saves you space as companies like Signal, WhatsApp etc. no longer need to train and ship their own machine learning models inside their apps, as it becomes a common library / API any app can use.
It could, of course, if implemented incorrectly, allow apps to snoop without asking for file access. I don't know enough to say.
Besides, you think that Google isn't already scanning for things like CSAM? It's been confirmed to be done on platforms like Google Photos well before SafetyCore was introduced, though I've not seen anything about it being done on devices yet (correct me if I'm wrong).
even if it was completely safe now, it will change in the fututure. Corporations just cant keep their hands to themselves and will saw any branch for short term profit because they will never get any REAL consequences for anything. Before long it would start connecting to internet to "better classify" the images by uploading everything to some server. Likely it will expand to every file eventually so it can "protect" you from whatever their spindoctors come up with.
Yes like most things this is misunderstood, bandwagoned and thus overblown.
Getting tired of social media. Even Lemmy.
The other one is the Firefox tou update... Not saying it won't eventually be a problem but as of today it's not sending your data to Mozilla. You have time to see how this pans out.
As someone who has never used Firefox only librewolf/mull/ironfox this analogy is asinine. Switching browsers is trivial and not at all like dealing with the threat of violence. It's exactly bullshit like this that is tiring. No one is really thinking just making unintelligent quips and reactions or parroting the bullshit of others.
Yes, hence it being a shit one.
No, for example fennec for fdroid which is the base for mull or ironfox has multiple code deletes to remove unsolicited data sent to Google.
That's not how open Source works...