This would probably be a bad customer experience for many people, even if Apple could prove these are simply the most common n-gram completions.
And if they altered their training data to avoid completions that are politically unpalatable, IMO that's actually much much worse than a grey list.
I'm a big free speech guy but this one is genuinely a bit complex.
- [ ] Disable autocomplete swear filter.
But finely grained options are not Apple’s way.
Consider the logic for tap’s could offer hundreds of customizations. That’s core functionality and I’m sure someone internally is thinking deeply about many of them. But if you offer zero customization most people just get used to how things operate so skipping that functionality isn’t terrible for the average user. Instead they offer options for people with disabilities which is a distinct group who can’t just adapt and thus a meaningful justification.
But any prediction picked by Apple without user input could be seen as Apple’s speech. If it’s suggested by Apple then they aren’t censoring you, they are censoring themselves.
Disable swears, alcohol, smoking, marijuana, gambling, child abuse and neglect, sensitive East Asian politics, sensitive Middle Eastern politics, WWII politics, Late Ottoman genocides, LGB issues, T issues, global warming, nuclear power, HOA issues, vegetarian issues, vegan issues...
To which the obvious counterargument is just “well of course they can stop at just one toggle. That’s not an excuse to have zero toggles”.
Talking about autocorrect and irritation, I remember a situation where someone caused a minor international incident by writing that something "caused a lot of irritation". The word they were aiming for before autocorrect chimed in was "iterations" (on a document). I'd rather make my own mistakes than constantly have to fight an autocorrect system.
Of course, people will still accuse Apple of being biased. But they’ll be wrong, and never manage to prove it (unlike this guy), which I think matters.
How does free speech come into it? Suggestions are not limitations (by a private company) on your output.
It'd be a better if Apple provided a list somewhere for transparency but what they are doing isn't going to cause anyone any trouble.
Promoting bad spelling and grammar is not a free speech issue.
This isn't about "promoting bad spelling"; we aren't talking about "misspelled 'bad' words don't get autocorrected". We're talking about a system where you try to type a "bad" word and the system substitutes a "good" word unless/until you override it. Or a system where you effectively choose every word from a menu, and the "bad" words are hidden using UI "dark patterns".
Or we could just type the whole sentence we need.
Tech-illiterate online mobs enraged by Apple “making a statement” will not stick around long enough to hear them argue about n-grams or whatever.
Or imagine if it auto-completed "the Holocaust is" with "a myth created by the ZOG"! I don't like these "imagine if X was Y" arguments because X isn't Y. Refusing to auto-complete "the occupied territories" (X) is really not the same thing as refusing to auto-complete antisemitism or group-based hate speech (Y). Argue whether X is right or wrong without changing the subject.
What you're really saying, perhaps without realizing it, is "I have zero empathy or theory of mind for people who have different views than me"
The whole reason these arguments exist is because power changes hands. If you like a rule only because the person currently wielding power aligns with you, you don't actually like the rule. You just like power.
Most people are not against transsexuals and gays.
There is no reason these kind of suggestions get pushed.
At least in the western civilization, I don’t see why it need to censor anything.
In the Bay Area?
In the United States?
In the Middle East?
In India and China?
All of planet earth?