The solution to not being poor is being rich. You could apply that logic to a lot of things. Have this thing instead of that thing. Using your example above of "differential privacy scanning"

Differential privacy is a property of a dataset meaning you can’t tell an individual was part of a dataset. If it’s traceable back to the individual device it’s not differentially private.

I think at this point you're just trying to say "don't have this thing have that thing instead" as a response to anything.

Certainly you can. The solution to being poor is not being poor. how? that is a different story, but ultimately, the solution to being poor must be not being poor, otherwise it isn't a solution right? And of course it is a reductive take, but it is nevertheless correct. Solutions that don't result in poor people no longer being poor are not solutions. Solutions that don't involve in not having an authoritarian regime are not solutions to that problem either.

Your solution to authoritarian regimes is not fighting CSAM, you made the CSAM problem worse, and it does not prevent authoritarian regimes. An authoritarian regime does not need your permission to scan your phone. And most human governments in history qualify as authoritarian, and they didn't need phones let along scanning of phones.

> I think at this point you're just trying to say "don't have this thing have that thing instead" as a response to anything.

I'm saying: "If you don't like apples, don't eat apples. Don't talk about how we need to kill all the bees and worms that help apple trees reproduce".

> Differential privacy is a property of a dataset meaning you can’t tell an individual was part of a dataset.

Yeah, that's correct. And that's a violation of individual's privacy..how?

What would it take for you to consider scanning of phones a valid solution. Would mass murder, global nuclear war, pandemic containment? Is it a question of not understanding the harm being done? My frustration is that, ok, let's not scan phones. what's your solution? You have none. Your solution is to do nothing and accept things should be the way they are. If I said let's verify everyone's ID before they can access the internet, is that acceptable? Let's ban Tor and VPNs instead, is that acceptable? What is your solution? Can you at least agree what we should aggresively be working on a solution? We have people training LLMs to generat CSAM and you hear not a peep out of all these companies and devs working on the tech. Just slap knees and declare "welp, that's unfortunate".

I don't care what governments do. If it takes an authoritarian regime to stop this insanity, I'm all for it. I'll be royally screwed, it will be a nightmware. But if that is the cost, so be it. This is how authoritarians gain power by the way. You have the apathetic educated and ruling classes, and the masses crying for change, and they will actually solve the problem but destroy everything else along the way. I'm tell you that if I, someone who is relatively aware and informed of the risks of privacy loss, of tech underlying the systems we use, if I am saying this, imagine what the majority of people would say.

it took one 9/11 attack to get us the patriot act, if someone used Tor on their rooted android phone to do something worse, phone scanning will be the least of your concerns. And the public would support it. You need a solution because the public demands it, at the cost of privacy if required. But it is for technologists to device a mechanism that solves the problem without costing us privacy.