LOS ANGELES — Apple is now blocking searches on innocuous terms including “Asian” and “teen,” apparently in the belief that only those seeking pornography would search these keywords.
The news was initially reported by tech blog Fossbytes.com.
It is the latest move by consumers’ corporate masters to limit the dissemination of information that they, or their antiporn antagonists, argue is against the moral fabric of a decent society.
While over-blocking questionable search terms may be inevitable given the extreme diversity of adult content available online, Apple’s broad brush may be seen as a sign of “porn culture” infecting its boardroom, where erring on the side of caution results in unforeseen consequences — including preventing the preparation of “Asian cuisine” for a special dinner — due to the lack of recipes showing up in a web search.
XBIZ tested various search terms on an iPhone XS Max running the current version of iOS, 13.3.1, with the “Limit Adult Websites” content blocking feature activated; upon typing various words into the Safari browser’s address bar, we received the following alert: “You cannot browse this page at ‘google.com’ because it is restricted.”
Those terms included “Asian Teens,” “Asian” and “teen,” along with “sex” and “sex education” — all of which are blocked from displaying search results; while searches for “sexual health” returned results of an academic and medical nature and a search for “sexual wellness” placed drugstore giant Walgreens in the first organic slot, followed by Walmart ranking No. 2 for that phrase — with both mainstream retailers linking to herbal supplements and sex toys through their Google listings.
While it is understandable that terms such as “free porn” and “MILF sex” are blocked when the adult content filter is activated, banning searches for anything “Asian” is troubling from a cultural sensitivity viewpoint and confusing given the fact that “Asians” (with an 's') is an acceptable search term — unless your search phrase is “Teen Asians,” of course.
The content blocker states the following: “Limit access to many adult websites automatically. Specific allowed and restricted websites can be added below.”
But adding popular porn portals such as Pornhub and xHamster to the blocker’s white list and then searching a common adult term such as “MILF” resulted in another alert: “Safari cannot open the page. The error was: ‘The URL was blocked by a content filter.’”
Clearly, there’s a lot of room for improvement in this iteration of content blocking technology, as Pornhub and xHamster were explicitly white-listed.
iPhone users can run their own search tests by tapping Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content > Limit Adult Websites.
Click here for the Fossbytes report.
