iOS blocks the word “Asian” if you enable Limit Adult Websites | Hacker News Reader

iOS blocks the word “Asian” if you enable Limit Adult Websites

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62 pointsmiles18 comments

Just another indicator that it's bad form to have a one-size-fits-all approach to filtering/sorting categories of content broadly.

Another blatant example? Go search for 'japanese' on DuckDuckGo or Bing with Safe Search turned off and observe the NSFW stuff you get as top results versus what's on Google.

I just tried searching for 'japanese' on DuckDuckGo with safe search turned off and only the last result on first page was NSFW. I tried the same search on Bing and did not get any NSFW on the first page.

For image search? I've verified myself that this regularly returns nearly exclusively NSFW thumbnails via a variety of methods that anonymize my identity, and have also had acquaintances verify that they see the same thing. It's a big enough sample size to suggest there's a problem that needs to be solved.

I did not try image search. I just tried it and you are correct.

I suspect that “image search with safe search turned off” is taken as a signal of intent...

The person I was responding to did not say image search and the tweet did not either.

> one-size-fits-all

Sorry, Apple has blocked this expression. To unblock it, please ask your legal guardian to file an application in triplicate.

Interesting. For a bunch of different regions ("swedish", "russian", "korean", "brazilian") the results on the image page are partially undressed women, but nothing NSFW. For "asian" there's a bunch of nudity but nothing pornographic. It's only for "japanese" that I start getting porn results, and nothing but porn results, in fact.

Interestingly "norwegian" gets me a bunch of pictures of people in traditional garb from far-right websites. "indian" is clean but weirdly marriage focused.

If you change your region on DuckDuckGo to Japan, you actually get some clean results at the top before you get to the porn.

I've yet to find anything racy for English speaking or western European countries (other than Sweden).

> partially undressed women, but nothing NSFW.

You must have one hell of a relaxed workplace if partially undressed women are considered "safe for work".

It also depends on what people mean by partially undressed.

Growing up in NYC in the 2000s school dress codes would often treat anything spaghetti strap or with bare shoulder as partially undressed, and the administrators definitely used that language to describe offending outfits.

> It also depends on what people mean by partially undressed.

In the case of these search results, a whole lot of swimsuits and lingerie.

Can’t wait for them to block stepbrother and BBC

Daddy I wanna watch bambi

I had to start running my DNS traffic through a kid safe filtering service after someone searched for "pictures of brown bunnies"...

Following the payment blockade on pornhub, some players in the industry are doing this kind of policing themselves. For example visit xvideos and you’ll find many words shortened to a single letter and also censored on search so they return no results.

Welcome to the pornification of the world.

Welcome to the prudification of the world, where the Silicon Valley is the ultimate arbiter of what's acceptable and what's obscene.

Oh god, not again Apple!

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