StenWillemse

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At what point does it become acceptable to violate someone’s privacy? For some people, the answer may be never. They will argue that privacy is a human right and point to article 12 of the universal declaration of human rights. Here It is stated that no person should have their privacy arbitrarily interfered with (United Nations, n.d.). Most people, however, will agree that it is ok to breach someone’s privacy if they are a big enough threat to society. This would explain why there is no public outcry every time the police listen to phone calls of suspected criminals or terrorists. But would it still be ok if everybody’s privacy would be violated to increase safety and stop criminals?

For Apple, the biggest company in the world, the answer to this question is yes. Their reasoning: to make their products safer for children. In August, they revealed plans to scan the files in everybody’s iCloud storage to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) (Whittaker, 2021).

This decision led to a lot of backlash against Apple. Everyone agrees that this is a serious topic and companies should make their products and services safe for children. But some experts see this decision as a pandora’s box and are scared that governments will use this technology one day as a surveillance tool. Other people are afraid of the possibility of false positives, where innocent people will be flagged as predators (Barrett & Hay Newman, 2021).

In September, Apple came with the announcement that the project was being paused. They will take the coming months to improve the system but are not abandoning it (Barrett & Hay Newman, 2021). I would love to hear what you think about this topic in the comments! Should Apple be able scan everybody’s files to detect CSAM or is this violation of privacy too big? Is the threat of this being used as a surveillance tool a real threat, given Apple’s track record of not cooperating with governments?

References

Barrett, B., & Hay Newman, L. (2021, September 3). Apple Backs Down on Its Controversial Photo-Scanning Plans. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-icloud-photo-scan-csam-pause-backlash/

United Nations. (n.d.). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations; United Nations. Retrieved October 9, 2021, from https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Whittaker, Z. (2021, August 5). Apple confirms it will begin scanning iCloud Photos for child abuse images. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/apple-icloud-photos-scanning/

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Facebook has received a lot of bad publicity in the last week. Almost everybody is aware of the huge outage that affected Facebook and its subsidiaries, which made it impossible for consumers to use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This is ofcourse a big problem and shows how reliable we are on a few companies to communicate with each other. However, this outage took the spotlight from much bigger problems with the platform that were revealed a couple of days earlier.

On Sunday, the identity of a whistleblower was revealed on the TV show “60 Minutes”. Frances Haugen started her job at Facebook in the civic integrity team. However, as time went on and this team got dissolved, Haugen became more and more disenchanted by the company. At some point during this year, she realized that the company prioritized its profits over the wellbeing of its users. She gathered thousands of documents and left the company (Duffy, 2021).

But what where the issues that made Haugen leave Facebook?

It has been shown that the use of social media can have negative effects on its users, like increased stress or anxiety (Brown, 2018). Haugen, however, revealed that Facebook knew of some of these negative effects and chose growth instead of fixing these issues. Two instances can be identified from the leaked documents. According to Haugen, Facebook knew from research that using Instagram could have a negative effect on the mental health of teenage girls and that it helps to create a divide in society (Eijsvoogel, 2021). The company chooses to ignore these problems and by doing so creating a worse society for us to live in.

Luckily, this problem is getting more attention in recent times. Haugen even appeared in front of the United States congress and lawmakers all over the world want to control (the seemingly endless) power of social media companies like Facebook. I would love to hear what you think about this issue! Should the government set stricter laws to try and limit the harm of social media or is this the responsibility of the users and not the company that provides the platform?

References:

Brown, J. (2018, January 4). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns. Bbc.com; BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns

Duffy, C. (2021, October 4). Facebook whistleblower revealed on ’60 Minutes,’ says the company prioritized profit over public good. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/03/tech/facebook-whistleblower-60-minutes/index.html

Eijsvoogel, J. (2021, October 5). Deze vrouw wil aan het licht brengen hoe gevaarlijk Facebook is. NRC. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/10/05/de-vrouw-die-facebook-in-t-nauw-bracht-a4060808

Is Apple Allowed To Scan Its ‘Rotten’ Part?

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