The article’s title speaks for itself, “Your iPhone’s Adult Content Filter Blocks Anything ‘Asian’”. Victoria Song has tested the claims made by The Independent: if you enable the “Limit Adult Websites” function in your iPhone’s Screen Time setting, then you are blocked from seeing any Google search results for “Asian”. Related searches such as “Asian recipes,” or “Southeast Asian,” are also blocked by the adult content filter. There is no clarity or transparency to how search terms are considered adult content or not, and whether the process is automated or done manually. Regardless of intention, the outcome and the lack of action by Google or Apple is unsurprising but disconcerting. It is far from a mistake, but rather, a feature of their commercial practices and their disregard to the social harms of their business model.
Continue reading “Filtering out the “Asians”” →