Apple has an undisclosed multilingual grey list of tens of thousands of words and phrases that its iOS keyboard will not autocomplete or swipe-type, a researcher said yesterday.
The list is not a ban. iPhone users can still type what they like when drafting emails and texts. But the words on the list will not be suggested to users via autocomplete or swipe-typing in most cases.
The researcher, Derek Kauffman, said the find opens a window into how Apple manages the tradeoff between anticipating what hundreds of millions of iPhone users are trying to say and preventing the devices from offering offensive or politically charged suggestions to users – something he said could quietly shape how they communicate.
“It’s a very light-touch form of censorship,” said Kauffman said. “But at the scale that Apple is operating, it only takes a light touch to have a big impact.”
Most of the flagged words and phrases are vulgar, offensive or related to drugs, sex or violence, according to Kauffman, who discovered the list recently and has published a website itemising them.
But some are politically charged, including ‘dictator Trump’ and ‘sleepy Joe’.
In an email, Apple did not comment directly on Kauffman’s findings, including the size or composition of its list, or its reasons for flagging certain political terms.
It said that iPhone users always had the option to type specific words or phrases and could always override any predictive text suggestions.
Apple said its keyboard was set up to avoid offering suggestions that might be inappropriate or offensive.
Other phrases excluded from iOS’s predictive text features include ‘right wing conspiracy’ as well as ‘Tibetan independence’ and ‘United Ireland’, according to Kauffman.
Non-English languages have different flagged words or phrases.
In Hindi, for example, the keyboard does not allow users to swipe-type ‘Modi braggart’ or ‘Rahul is Pappu’, digs at India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his leading opponent, Rahul Gandhi, respectively, according to Kauffman.
He said French speakers could not swipe-type the French phrase ‘immigration too high’ and that Hebrew speakers could not swipe-type ‘occupied territories’.
“Every major language has some version of this,” Kauffman said.
Kauffman said it was understandable that Apple wanted to keep users from accidentally sending obscene messages or inflammatory slogans.
But he said there were inconsistencies in how Apple applied the feature.
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