Is a united Ireland inevitable? Not if you’re using an iPhone.
A researcher has revealed that tech giant Apple Inc has an undisclosed list of tens of thousands of words and phrases that its keyboard will not autocomplete.
These include “Sleepy Joe” and “Tibetan independence”.
“United Ireland” is also on the list, meaning Apple’s predictive text refuses to recognise the eventuality – even if former British prime minister Gordon Brown, among others, regards Irish unity as a foregone conclusion.
RM Block
While the “grey list” is rich material for comedy, it also raises serious questions about how tech companies influence everyday communications.
“It’s a very light-touch form of censorship,” said Derik Kauffman, the researcher who discovered the list. “But at the scale that Apple is operating, it only takes a light touch to have a big impact.”
The list does not amount to a ban. iPhone users can still type what they like when drafting emails and texts. But the words on the list will not be suggested to users via autocomplete or swipe-typing in most cases.
Kauffman, who shared his finding with news agency Reuters, said it opened a window into how Apple managed the trade-off between anticipating what hundreds of millions of iPhone users were trying to say and preventing the devices from offering offensive or politically charged suggestions to users – something he said could quietly shape how they communicated.
Most of the flagged words and phrases are vulgar, offensive or related to drugs, sex or violence, according to Kauffman, who discovered the list recently and has created a website itemising them. But some are politically charged, including “dictator Trump”.
In an email, Apple did not comment directly on Kauffman’s findings, including the size or composition of its list, or its reasons for flagging certain political terms.
It said iPhone users always had the option to type specific words or phrases and could always override any predictive text suggestions. Apple said its keyboard was set up to avoid offering suggestions that might be inappropriate or offensive.
Other phrases excluded from iOS’s predictive text features include “right-wing conspiracy”, according to Kauffman.
He said French speakers could not swipe-type the French phrase “immigration too high” and that Hebrew speakers could not swipe-type “occupied territories”.
“Every major language has some version of this,” Kauffman said.
He said it was understandable that Apple wanted to keep users from accidentally sending obscene messages or inflammatory slogans, but there were inconsistencies in how the feature was applied.
For example, he said “read smut” could be swipe-typed while “read gay smut” could not.
David Greene, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group, said that although a part of him found the word list “creepy” and he wondered about Apple’s judgment calls, he could see an argument for it being a useful way to curb unwanted or inflammatory suggestions.
“But if they are going to do it, this is something users should be really well aware of and have some ability to customise,” Greene said. “This is something that should not be secret.”
Reuters tested a small subset of the phrases identified by Kauffman on an iPhone and found they were all difficult to enter through swipe-typing or were not suggested via autocomplete.
[ Bring back rote learning, predictive text means lazy brainsOpens in new window ]
It found attempts to swipe-type “Tibetan independence” or “United Ireland” often yielded “Tibetan independences” or “United Iceland”. – Additional reporting Reuters
