Phil Schiller Responds to App Store Dictionary Censoring
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
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 don't like the idea that reviewers are doing their best to try 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.
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.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program"
Just to present an alternate viewpoint, where app reviewers manage to do good: That depends. If the reviewer was trying to make my app fail by crashing it — and managed to do so — I'd want to hear about it and have it fixed before I heard about it from the public.
If you look at the parental controls interface on your iPhone (Settings -> General -> Restrictions), it's obvious that Safari, Mail, YouTube, and so on can be individually restricted. There's also the more general option that allows restriction of third party apps based on rating.
The goal of the parental controls is to secure the device against anything that goes beyond a given rated standard. That explains these decisions that seem silly, like requiring an adult rating because if you search for 'fuck' you get a definition, or because an app provides a webkit view of a totally innocuous wikipedia page. These are security holes that an enterprising 12 year old who wanted to circumvent the parental controls might be able to exploit.
Yeah, you have to turn off Safari and YouTube and the rest to get a fully locked down phone, but you can do that. Doing so might be lousy parenting, but that's not at issue. The parental control feature is designed to allow a complete lockdown, that's what Apple claims it does, and the app review policy has to be strict, or it won't work.
The fact that you can lock down all third party browsers based on rating, but have to explicitly lock down Safari separately exposes the absurdity and inconsistency of this policy.
If Apple 'rated' Safari 17+ and youtube something like 14+, and the parental controls were applied universally, their policy wouldn't be nearly so bad.
Apple is making a fairly strict policy decision (open internet == 17+). But with separated parental controls for safari and youtube, they're are exempting themselves from the downsides of this policy (equivocating Safari with apps that actually do contain vulgar, suggestive and/or violent content).
If they were at least willing to eat their own dog food, one could argue that Apple doesn't feel their policy is too strict. That they don't demonstrates that even they can see that the classification system doesn't quite work.
We're totally fine with established rich white vulgarity, but new poor black vulgarity? Come on now, that's just crossing the line.
He's characterizing certain slang as 'urban slang' because what he's talking about comes predominantly from a site called urbandictionary, which has about as much in common with urban culture as amazon.com has in common with the rainforest.
Do you honestly believe that Schiller was referring to race? If not, do you honestly believe that a substantial portion of other readers would have interpreted it that way? If not, do you honestly belive that it was unreasonable to use the term?
But that doesn't mean this is a grievous sin, or that it's worth getting worked up over. I didn't and am not excoriating him for it. It just struck me as I was reading the article, and I thought it was worth pointing out.
Do you honestly believe that Schiller was referring to race?
No, I don't think Schiller is a racist. But I am a little concerned that it might point to a deeper, socially embedded racism, that the terms that were deemed too offensive may actually have been inner-city slang that has equivalent terms in the accepted dictionary. If the same idea can be expressed in two different ways, one of which is considered vulgar, what, exactly is driving that categorization?
If not, do you honestly believe that a substantial portion of other readers would have interpreted it that way?
I would hope they wouldn't read it and decide that he was a racist, no, but I do think a lot of eyebrows were raised by it, yes.
If not, do you honestly belive that it was unreasonable to use the term?
Yes, I think it was a bad choice of words. Even if you ignore that there are racial connotations in the phrase, it still doesn't express what he means. Who cares about 'city' slang? Suburban or rural slang can't be extremely vulgar?
Anyways, I think it's a little ironic that we're talking about whether he should have to take care in the words he chooses to use, when the issue at hand is that his company is censoring a dictionary.
'Urban slang' is pretty clearly associated with a particular socio-economic group (regardless of if you wish to acknowledge that or not)
Still, that's not a very convincing argument. You say yourself that you don't believe Schiller was referring to race (contradicting your initial statement), so why should I? Because in some other context it could be used to express something racist? My Uncle Tom likes Oreos as much as he likes Twinkies. Does that make me racist?
I did not and do not claim that "urban slang" could not be interpreted to have racial connotations. I do claim that in this case you have to willfully distort the author's intent in order to read it the way you expressed in your original post, and that characterizing it as the author's mistake is unwarranted.
But I am a little concerned that it might point to a deeper, socially embedded racism
Define "socially embedded".
If the same idea can be expressed in two different ways, one of which is considered vulgar, what, exactly is driving that categorization?
This is ambiguous: you're implying that racism is driving it just after stating that you don't believe that was what was meant. You're reading something into the text that is not there, and not citing any other reason.
I do think a lot of eyebrows were raised by it, yes.
What does that mean? My question was unambiguous. Your answer is not. You're saying you think people both did and did not interpret it as racist.
I think it's a little ironic that we're talking about whether he should have to take care in the words he chooses to use
We aren't talking about whether, but of how much. You appear to support self-censorship even while seeming to acknowledge that few if any in the audience actually regarded the term as reflecting racist intent. I do not agree. I think that is unreasonably excessive in the majority of such circumstances.
As an avid English speaker, I wholeheartedly reject this notion of turning the language into a minefield of words you absolutely must avoid even when nobody is likely to misinterpret them.
I have explicitly stated otherwise in a prior post. You're choosing to actively distort my words. Please don't do that. We disagree on the degree. I find the degree of self-censorship you advocate to be excessive.
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)
I can believe Bezos. Schiller? Not for a second.
Fuck that. It is exactly the same thing, but the lexicon has evolved.
The problem is not so much that Apple is censoring NinjaWords, as that Apple is penalizing them for engaging in censorship, while approving and/or offering (via Safari etc.) apps which allow access to the exact same 'offensive' information. This seems to me to be an unfair restraint of trade.
The idea that children shouldn't see swear words is leading to a categorical error. The debate is about how much, for which there is no right answer, instead of if at all.
As a parent, let me put some authority behind it and say the parental control is the off switch. If parents aren't there to turn it off - guess what: your kids are already looking at donkey porn, and there is nothing you can do about it.
The whole issue is such a farce, where Apple is really looking to give the impression that it cares and controls the situation, when it doesn't. They make a web browser that can easily search for porn. Is there effectively a difference between that and an app where you can search for a dry definition of a dirty word?
There is a difference - the browser is far worse. And not restricted. And made by Apple itself.
Again, I agree with you in pretty much everything else you're saying. I just think its stupid to pretend like Apple is evil for this particular alleged hypocrisy - "Oh noes, they let kids look at porn without restriction in Safari but ban my dirty word dictionary!" - when their real fuckups are already sufficiently bad.
Why are you hung up on this? I'm not saying "don't be pissed at Apple", I'm saying "don't be pissed at Apple for imaginary things".
If there were a parental control for the app store that blocked objectionable content, off by default, this whole issue would go away.
Um, that's exactly how the parental controls for the app store work. Apple uses the rating system to determine what apps are considered objectionable, the parental controls block access based on those ratings, and access to everything is enabled by default.
I wonder about that.
I wrote the Nihongo app, which, like NinjaWords, kept getting rejected until I finally set the rating to 17+.
When it was finally in the AppStore, friends told me that an "are you sure, since this app has Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity and Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes"-type warning came up just before they hit "Buy".
I wonder how many people hesitated or declined to buy the app b/c of that.
But a warning before you buy certainly stigmatizes 17+ apps. I bet lots of people hesitated.
Similarly, I wrote the Jishobot app and had to change its rating up to 17+. I'm calling bullshit on Phil Schiller's response. Am I allowed to say that?
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/26/update-promo-codes-are-now-al...
If you can't comment about the Ninjawords Dictionary without cursing then your opinion on Parental Controls is inherently flawed.
The Parental Controls aren't there for you. They are there for me. I don't want to fill my headspace with negativity.
It's not censorship. It's about letting the consumer know what they are actually purchasing.
There's a brilliant episode in The Life of Brian that makes fun of people who are unable to take into account the purpose and context in which words are used:
In other words, if NinjaWords was simply required to put a warning on their app that says, "This dictionary can be used to reference strong language," I doubt anybody (parents, Apple or developers) would have a problem.
The issue is that various different types of content get munged together through some obscure function to form an "Age" rating, which appears to be the "Government Recommended Prudeness" level.
It would be more useful to parents AND developers if we could simply attach a badge warning specifically about content within each app ("This browser may be used to access 3rd party content including sexual, violent, or vulgar themes"). Let the parents decide for themselves how that translates to age.
Dictionary.com's app contains 'fuck', was released in April (before parental controls), and now has an "age 4+" rating.
NinjaWords was given 'fuck' as one of several examples of problem vulgar terms in screenshots and told to resubmit and/or wait for parental controls that would put them in the "17+" category.
At the very least, Apple's prior guidance to NinjaWords was confusing and incomplete, if it did not clearly state that 'fuck' was fine and the other slang was the problem.
Schiller (at least as Gruber has excerpted) doesn't address this failing at all.
If you're fundamentally opposed to doing business with companies that restrict the flow of information in order to access wider markets, you're going to have to stop using (among other things) Google, which censors itself in China.
Otherwise, you're going to have to accept that some people want their information filtered by a third-party.
Google's core business revolves around interposing itself between you and the information you're looking for. Google Image search excludes certain content from by default. Gmail filters spam by default. YouTube forbids many kinds of content. They do these things because people want these things. If they filtered information that people did want to access, they would be more likely to call it censorship instead of a useful service.
I may not like what they're doing in China but I recognize that they have a gun to their heads and that they are being forced into the role of censor.
Utterly untrue. Google is absolutely not forced to do business in China (or any other country that they alter their results on behalf of). They choose to censor themselves in order to access that market. (In crystal clear terms: Google censors itself on behalf of government in exchange for money.) If you are morally opposed to doing business with companies that are complicit in content filtering, then you must be morally opposed to using Google.
I contend that most people are not morally opposed to this -- they merely think they are. And further: that this is ok. But people would be better off admitting this than being selectively ignorant.
Google choosing to filter it's results for "tiananmen square" is not less bad than Apple choosing not to sell dictionaries that contain the term "cumdumpster" in the store that it operates. And yet people in the U.S. are prefer to engage in moral outrage over the latter. This is fucked up.
Apple, on the other hand, seems to delight in meddling in my business.
Apple is choosing to require content ratings in order to access the market of people who care about content ratings. There is no evidence anywhere that Apple's content restrictions are in place for any reason other than market pressure to conform to the same moderate standards that most of our culture does. (That is: saying they "delight" is a stretch). That you personally do not conform to those standards says nothing about whether Apple, a profit-seeking company, should do so. Also, I would point out that it is not your business being meddled with--Apple does not censor your content at all (and indeed, they did not censor Ninjawords' content). It is Apple's business. They operate a store and they choose what they are willing to sell in it.
> Otherwise, you're going to have to accept that some people want their information filtered by a third-party.
I totally agree with that. But I also believe that these people should not be allowed in a civilized society. Censorship is bad. End of question. There should be a zero-tolerance policy against any kind of censorship anywhere in the world.
And please, enough with the "what about the children?!" attitude. You are responsible for your children. The rest of the society doesn't have to suffer for them.
If not, let me state unambigously that you have completely misconstrued what I said, ascribed opinions to me that I do not hold, and expressed one of the most horrifyingly totalitarian ideals I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I'm hesitant to write a more detailed reply because I'm not sure whether you've just fundamentally misunderstood what is being discussed or whether you're completely out of your mind. Do you truly wish for people to be imprisoned (or however else excluded from civilized society) for using parental controls on a prodcut they give to their children?
Personally in the Apple vs. the people fight, I'll be cheering for the people who decide that they can do a better job policing themselves and their children than Apple can. I know it's not easy, but it is a parent's job to prepare their children to live in the world as it actually is. That includes the vulgar, violent, and hateful things in the world.
<sarcasm>That must mean children growing up in war zones and neighborhoods with a lot of crime must be the best "prepared" children, and parents should try to emulate such environments for their children's benefit.</sarcasm>
When this happens, who knows how these children will respond? We hope positively, but it could also be negatively or indifferently. Whatever it is, by this time, it's usually too late for a parent to provide meaningful advice.
Adults can still provide a positive, nurturing environment at home for their children and, at the same time, teach them about the right ways to handle unpleasant situations they may encounter in their lives. These "unpleasant situations" can occur in even the nicest of neighborhoods.
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.
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.
The key here is "one of the nicest". Is it nice if they use your money to control what people can and can't think? And anyway, there is Android, which is just as nice as the iPhone.
I really don't see any major differences between the iPhone and Android, except that Android has the notification drawer and the iPhone shows notifications on the app icon. They both have fine apps available in the same areas, with Android leaning towards more useful apps, like IRC in the background. The basic functionality is the same (except I can use Google Voice for my calls), the browser is the same codebase, etc., etc. So anyone that says they "have to have" an iPhone is probably wrong; Android will get them everything the iPhone has, minus any Apple evilness. (HTC makes nice phones.)
Google has thankfully thrown their weight behind a free marketplace.
Phil Schiller: "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."
Phil Crosby: "They provided screenshots of the words 'shit' and 'fuck' showing up in our dictionary's search results."
I'm sorry, this is a strong suggestion that without these types of words, the app would be approved.
If you don't call that censorship, then call it "chilling effect", but the outcome is the same.
And the other thing that doesn't ring true is the following oddity.
Phil Schiller: "...anyone can easily see that Apple has previously approved other dictionary applications in the App Store that include all of the 'swear' words..."
Then why did Apple reject the app for these swear words?
(And why is 'swear' in inverted commas?)
[edit: formatting]
Parental controls and ratings are a quagmire. And the more technological the product, the stickier it gets.
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.
No, they're not. If they were even trying, 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.
Also, funny to see John Gruber changing his stance on the issue in one day.