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.

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Dylan16807 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> It’s not a censorship issue, at least in the USA, because they’re not afraid of legal pressure from the U.S. government.

This is just as wrong as people citing the first amendment in the wrong situations, but in the opposite direction.

Private censorship is censorship. Even if someone declares it "reasonable".

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otterley 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Private censorship is censorship

There is such a thing people refer to colloquially as “self censorship” but that basically means keeping your damn fool mouth shut out of respect for yourself and others. That’s different from being forced to keep quiet under penalty of law.

Calling the two the same thing doesn’t help bring clarity or reduce ambiguity. Who is penalizing you for what you say, and what the penalty is, are relevant.

Consider: is it censorship when you refuse to call your mother a c**?

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Dylan16807 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Self-censorship is a bit different but this isn't self-censorship. This isn't apple choosing the words in their own communications. This is a keyboard imposing rules on all their users.

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otterley 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It is not imposing any rules on their users. This is the software mechanically speaking on Apple’s behalf, by offering quick suggestions. It intentionally avoids suggesting misspelled words, too (which I don’t think anyone would misattribute to “censorship”). Users are still allowed to type whatever they want.

Some historical context is also useful: Google took a bunch of heat when search autocomplete first came out in the 2000s for some of the foibles it made. Once you’re big enough, no matter what kind or direction of error you make, someone’s going to make hay of it.

In the end, this is merely petulant behavior by people who disagree with Apple’s choices as to how they program software. So their keyboard won’t suggest the word “n—-r”. Big deal. Complaining about it says more about the complainant than it does Apple.

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Dylan16807 3 hours ago | parent [-]

For the suggestions it's a stretch to say it speaks on Apple's behalf.

But the really big issue isn't the suggestions, it's the words that won't come out when swipe typing. Even though they're in the keyboard's dictionary.

The example of swears that aren't in the dictionary at all is a much smaller matter and old old news. It's not even 1% of this list.

This is the keyboard knowing what word best matches my movement and deliberately ignoring that word when there are spooky neighbor words. It's blocking my input on purpose. Censorship.

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otterley 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The word "best" is carrying a lot of water for your argument.

Please don't redefine words to mean something they don't mean to suit your political purposes. It tarnishes our discourse and makes understanding each other more difficult. You can still write whatever you want, and so can Apple, so definitionally not any other kind of censorship than garden variety self-censorship.

Again, I think this says more about you than it does Apple. It'd be very illuminating for you to tell us what you intend to swipe to type.

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Dylan16807 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

> The word "best" is carrying a lot of water for your argument.

It's the one the algorithm says fits, before they add the secondary blocking later.

As someone else put it:

> if you backspace and try swiping again, you immediately get "grocery lost". with "left wing propaganda" you can backspace and try again 100 times, you will only get "left wring propaganda".

> now ask yourself, since you insist it's probabilistic: what is statistically more probable, "left wing propaganda" or "left wring propaganda"?

It knows the word you want and refuses it.

I don't think it's redefining anything to call that censorship.

They make it impossible to swipe the word without tricking it by putting extra words in between and deleting them.

> Again, I think this says more about you than it does Apple. It'd be very illuminating for you to tell us what you intend to swipe to type.

Are you serious? Fuck off. I rarely swear here but that implication deserves no better.

	▲	otterley 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> They make it impossible to swipe the word without tricking it by putting extra words in between and deleting them. Again, not censoring you. You can still write whatever you like. I don’t know why you keep ignoring this inconvenient fact. > Are you serious? Fuck off. Thank you for proving my point.