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Comment by scosman | Hacker News Reader

All swipe to type is predictive. It's ignoring 80% of the letters you swipe over, and guessing your intent.

You didn't "swipe Ireland", you're swiping something like IUYTRERGHJKLKJHGFDSASDCVBNHGFD" and it's predicting "Ireland".

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The problem is not accuracy -- the words from the problem phrases are never suggested either. Worse, on the three-word phrases, iOS goes back and changes earlier words to avoid completing the phrase, and removes the original from the suggestions.

I tried typing "propaganda" ten times with 100% accuracy. When it's preceded with "[left] wing", the accuracy drops to 0%.

It's still predictive. It's using the context of surrounding words, and guessing the whole phrase.

Try swiping "grocery lost" and it will predict "grocery list", even you swiped over "o" and not "i". "put", "pit" and "pot" are all exactly the same swipe, and it always has to guess which you want.

It really is always guessing, and never completely sure. Every good consumer predictive system has some guardrails. Not guessing "free tibet" for someone in China could keep them out of serious trouble.

Could then tune the confidence thresholds instead of block list? Probably. Are they censoring you? No, just tap the letters.

I swipe United, it gets it right the first time.

I swipe Ireland, it gets it right the first time.

I swipe “united ireland” a hundred times, it never work.

It’s not probability.

You swipe “grocery lost”, you get “grocery list”. It is probabilistic.

if you backspace and try swiping again, you immediately get "grocery lost". with "left wing propaganda" you can backspace and try again 100 times, you will only get "left wring propaganda".

now ask yourself, since you insist it's probabilistic: what is statistically more probable, "left wing propaganda" or "left wring propaganda"?

there's nothing probabilistic about this

wtf you're absolutely right. ffs. On gboard it can only change the last word and not previous accepted words for me and I get left wing programs every time.

So what does this mean? What means would they be using to avoid this prediction?

Tried this myself. Got 10/10 on propaganda, 0/10 on left wing propaganda, 10/10 on right wring propaganda.

I think that’s a bigger issue regardless of your political stance.

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