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points by creata 11 hours ago | 0 comments
> 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 11 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 11 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 10 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 10 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 9 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 6 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 10 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.