Phil Schiller Responds to App Store Dictionary Censoring

This is the part I'm most worried about:<p><i>As is clear from the screenshots, Qingwen doesn’t bombard you with words like “cock” and “penis” the moment you start it up. No, the Apple employee who took those screenshots specifically searched for those words. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the same thing as opening a website that contains swear words (like the page you’re reading, for instance) on the iPhone. If they don’t want Qingwen on the iPhone because it can show you “objectionable material”, then why allow Safari, Mail, YouTube and pretty much any other app, which can easily show you all sorts of even more “objectionable material”?</i><p>I don't like the idea that reviewers are doing their best to <i>try</i> and make my apps fail approval. That comes across to me as a developer that Apple doesn't want me to succeed. And based on how they have been treating developers lately, that definitely seems to be the case.<p>At the very least, this shows that the execs at Apple at least know about the problem. I know it's hard to miss, but I honestly thought they could have not heard about these issues by now. It's that bad. The utter silence that their corporate culture encourages is creating a horrible situation for them and for us. They need to realize that the traditional ways of secrecy and black boxing that normally works for other areas of their business is not going to work here.

<i>A quick search on Wiktionary.org easily turns up a number of offensive “urban slang” terms that you won’t find in popular dictionaries such as one that you referenced, the New Oxford American Dictionary included in Mac OS X.</i><p>We're <i>totally fine</i> with established rich white vulgarity, but new poor black vulgarity? Come on now, that's just crossing the line.

"Apple did not censor"<p>You don't split hairs with a weasel-word defense if you're committed to any sort of change. Note the difference between this (we didn't do anything wrong. we'll do better in the future) and Bezo's letter (we fucked up. even if we were technically right, it was still wrong. we'll do better in the future)<p>I can believe Bezos. Schiller? Not for a second.

They essentially said "ohh, we don't mind the 'swear' words, just the really bad ones"<p>Fuck that. It is exactly the same thing, but the lexicon has evolved.

How can a person on one hand say "Apple did not reject this developer’s application for including references to common swear words" and on that other hand know that the app was being banned because they wanted a 17+ rating due to the availability, to quote the article, of the words "shit, fuck, and cunt, specifically." Are not the former common swear words, and is not the restriction of material from wider audiences censorship?

It's nice that Schiller took the time to respond, but his letter doesn't make them look any better. They're still acting like useless self-appointed meddling busybodies with rigor mortis of the anal sphincter. I can accept them setting standards for hardware and software quality, but when they start imposing their standards on the flow of information, services (Google Voice) and ideas, they've lost me forever.

The problem here is two fold. Apple conduct a deliberate search for swear words and slang, find it, flag it to the developer, and bounce the app. Technorati goes mad, sets the blogosphere alight with vitriol and damns Apple to hell, scant months after worshipping the self-same company. Alternatively, Apple fail to conduct said search, pass the app, and someone's rosy cheeked darling is caught scanning naughty words on their iPhone. Consumer advocacy groups and parental groups set the blogosphere alight with vitriol and damns Apple to hell. The honeymoon for Apple is over. They fought, they gained market and mindshare, and now they find themselves in a position where their former fans wish to slay them, and they're high profile enough to piss off the non-techs who buy their tech. Will be watching the Apple hate with interest in the coming months, same as with the Google hate. How we do loathe a victor.

Something still does not smell right about this.<p>Phil Schiller: <i>"Apple did not censor the content in this developer’s application and Apple did not reject this developer’s application for including references to common swear words."</i><p>Phil Crosby: <i>"They provided screenshots of the words 'shit' and 'fuck' showing up in our dictionary's search results."</i><p>I'm sorry, this is a strong suggestion that without these types of words, the app would be approved.<p>If you don't call that censorship, then call it "chilling effect", but the outcome is the same.<p>And the other thing that doesn't ring true is the following oddity.<p>Phil Schiller: <i>"...anyone can easily see that Apple has previously approved other dictionary applications in the App Store that include all of the 'swear' words..."</i><p>Then why did Apple reject the app for these swear words?<p>(And why is 'swear' in inverted commas?)<p>[edit: formatting]

The problem that I see is that Apple has no business being in the censorship or rating business period. Sure there are "business reasons" to perform these roles, but they are antithetical to a free society.<p>The free market answer would be, if you don't like it don't buy an iPhone. That's great, but as technology marches forward there can only be a finite number of companies with the skills and resources to create smart phones, Apple being one of the nicest offerings. This concern will probably never effect enough consumers for this to ever hurt Apple's bottom line, and so they will never feel a free market pressure to change their behavior.<p>A sort of net neutrality type of guarantee must be struck here, market forces will not prevail because this simply isn't an issue enough people care about. Rights are being infringed however and that must be addressed.

I feel cautious optimism at this sign that the top folks at Apple realize that the app store approval process is a mess, and is perceived as such.

There will always be decisions which seem arbitrary and subjective in these situations because what's going on here is a very rough categorization with no room for nuance. And the very idea of age as a measure of appropriateness is pretty arbitrary to begin with, after all.<p>Parental controls and ratings are a quagmire. And the more technological the product, the stickier it gets.

Well this effectively makes the parental controls useless. I don't want my kids to watch porn on their phones, but I do want them to have dictionaries.<p>It seems that Apple is treating parental controls as way to check a checkbox in a feature list, instead of as something that can actually be used.

I wish George Carlin was alive to see this: (NSFW esp if you work at apple) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Nrp7cj_tM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Nrp7cj_tM</a>

"" That Schiller was willing to respond in such detail and length, on the record, is the first proof I’ve seen that Apple’s leadership is trying to make the course correction that many of us see as necessary for the long-term success of the platform. ""<p>No, they're not. If they were even <i>trying</i>, they would have scrapped the approval process altogether. True, the approval process has resulted in many high quality applications, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not completely retarded.<p>Also, funny to see John Gruber changing his stance on the issue in one day.

The idea that teenagers under 17 need to be shielded from certain language is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure they can handle it. I listened to <i>NIN</i> as a 14 year old, read "profane" Heinlein stories and watched numerous violent movies. I don't feel particularly corrupted by it.

Oh noes! "unfiltered internet access" is bad.

Perhaps Apple should rebrand themselves as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.