This is how censorship works best, if folks start anticipating and avoiding it so the censors dont even have to exert pressure.
HN is hardly immune from this; it’s no small irony that there will be people doing that very thing right here in these comments.
They have a good argument, too! Why should Apple be able to hide behind the excuse that the data is crowdsourced, therefore they have no responsibility for it? Didn't the social networks try that one already?
Damned if you do and damned if you don't, in this situation.
If Apple doesn't want its autocorrect to suggest statistically likely opinions on divisive topics, then sure, whatever. But when it has a hard blacklist of input it will categorically refuse from the user and editorialize it with nonsensical changes that only serve to avoid the blacklist, that is a very, very bad look.
If the user tried to swipe-type "Tibetan independence" and got one or two letters wrong, there's still probably a 90% or even 99% likelihood that their intent was to type "Tibetan independence." Not suggesting "Tibetan independence" is censorship, it's not benign carefulness.
We're not talking about Apple accidentally turning "Buttermilk pancakes" into "Muslim extremist."
>and "we know what you wanted to type with 90% confidence
Problem is, because statistics, 90% confidence is wrong 10% of the time. Now you have a big polarizing news story about Apple pushing Trump (or Biden) propaganda onto some maximally sympathetic person who hates that sort of thing.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't, like I said!
Apple chose the sin of omission over the sin of commission. I think that's the right move. Of all the terrible options, Apple found the least terrible IMO.
But think about it, we're not talking about auto-suggest here. The distinction I made in the parent is critical. Can you imagine what the article headline is like? "I swiped 'duck' into my iPhone. It said 'fuck'." - something like that? It's ludicrous at face value, especially because you can't show this was on Apple in any way. The immediate reaction from the readers, Apple and any random bystander would be "lol the author must have swiped it in really weird". I just can't see any variation of this, even on the most divisive topics, doing any actual damage to Apple. Unlike autocorrect, it just comes off as your phone 'mishearing' you and outputting something similar that just happens to be problematic in some way, not as Apple intently putting words in your mouth. If we assume the best of intentions from Apple, they're still overreacting and purposefully setting arbitrary hard rules about how you can't use their (not your) device.