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points by noah_buddy 13 hours ago | 0 comments

I agree with you that the whole concept of restricting terms on a keyboard is dystopian and your analogy to a physical keyboard which prevents you from typing certain terms is apt.

Apple should not be in the business of editorializing their users’ writings. The whole deferral to “well you can just manually type it out” raises the obvious question “then why can’t I swipe it out?”

[–] creata 13 hours ago

> raises the obvious question “then why can’t I swipe it out?”

Because then it could look like they're suggesting the word to you, rather than you explicitly selecting it, and they don't want to be accused of suggesting any terms that might be controversial, for the same reason they don't want to be accused of suggesting profanity to their users.

[–] evrydayhustling 12 hours ago

This is the level-headed explanation I can imagine being made earnestly in the board room. But it still boils down to coercion -- in this case, Apple is anticipating and passing along the coercion from sources it believes it could be embarrassed by.

This is how censorship works best, if folks start anticipating and avoiding it so the censors dont even have to exert pressure.

[–] otterley 12 hours ago

It’s not a censorship issue, at least in the USA, because they’re not afraid of legal pressure from the U.S. government. It’s a public relations issue. Every day, “journalists” and “influencers” are conjuring up some new controversy for the masses to get their panties in a twist about. It’s reasonable to want to avoid that.

HN is hardly immune from this; it’s no small irony that there will be people doing that very thing right here in these comments.

[–] schiffern 12 hours ago

In a parallel universe, an HN comment is complaining that when Apple's raw autocomplete (straight from crowdsourced data with no post-processing) happily suggests the statistically common phrase Sleepy Joe, this is Apple "passing along coercion" from the crowd.

They have a good argument, too! Why should Apple be able to hide behind the excuse that the data is crowdsourced, therefore they have no responsibility for it? Didn't the social networks try that one already?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, in this situation.

[–] tavavex 11 hours ago

To me, there is a big difference between an Apple algorithm saying "we saw what you typed, would you like to follow that up with <suggestion>?" and "we know what you wanted to type with 90% confidence, but we wouldn't want to say things like that, would we now?". One is predictive, the other acts after the fact.

If Apple doesn't want its autocorrect to suggest statistically likely opinions on divisive topics, then sure, whatever. But when it has a hard blacklist of input it will categorically refuse from the user and editorialize it with nonsensical changes that only serve to avoid the blacklist, that is a very, very bad look.

[–] ryandrake 10 hours ago

Exactly. A lot of posters here are excusing this by saying, well, Apple is guessing and doesn't want to guess wrong. They are ignoring the strength of the user's intent, and the calculated likelihood that they intended to type something in one of these blacklists.

If the user tried to swipe-type "Tibetan independence" and got one or two letters wrong, there's still probably a 90% or even 99% likelihood that their intent was to type "Tibetan independence." Not suggesting "Tibetan independence" is censorship, it's not benign carefulness.

We're not talking about Apple accidentally turning "Buttermilk pancakes" into "Muslim extremist."

[–] schiffern 8 hours ago

  >and "we know what you wanted to type with 90% confidence

Sounds great.

Problem is, because statistics, 90% confidence is wrong 10% of the time. Now you have a big polarizing news story about Apple pushing Trump (or Biden) propaganda onto some maximally sympathetic person who hates that sort of thing.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, like I said!

Apple chose the sin of omission over the sin of commission. I think that's the right move. Of all the terrible options, Apple found the least terrible IMO.

[–] giantrobot 12 hours ago

I remember way back when, Google bombing was still a thing. Lots of people linked the term "miserable failure" to George W. Bush's White House page. Then searching for "miserable failure" in Google ended up with the White House page being the top link.

Much hay was made in some circles that Google was saying George W. Bush's White House was a miserable failure. No tech company wants to be the target of that sort of campaign today. Especially not with a petulant thin skinned narcissist in office that already has demanded protection money to ward off tariffs and other retribution available to the Presidency.

[–] DonHopkins 13 hours ago

Reminds me of one of Microsoft's first Dynamic HTML demos:

There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site".

When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your cursor before you could click it!

Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your mouse!

Dammit Microsoft!!! ;)

[–] ozim 12 hours ago

I am typing this on a fucking iPhone right here. Well I never got into swiping because I was too afraid I will fucking offend someone and I want to be in control of what I write.

See I tapped out all those characters just for you.