Apple accused of censoring swear words on its new iPhone operating system

San Francisco: Apple is censoring words and phrases relating to politics, religion, democracy and human rights — which customers can engrave on its products — in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, CitizenLab has revealed.

An interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, CitizenLab's research found that part of Apple's mainland China political censorship bleeds into both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"Much of this censorship exceeds Apple's legal obligations in Hong Kong, and we are aware of no legal justification for the political censorship of content in Taiwan," said the report that came out on Wednesday. An analysis found that the company filters 1,045 keywords in China, compared to 542 in Hong Kong, 397 in Taiwan, 206 in Canada, 192 in Japan, and 170 in the US.

"We present evidence that Apple does not fully understand what content they censor and that, rather than each censored keyword being born of careful consideration, many seem to have been thoughtlessly reappropriated from other sources," the team noted. (IANS)

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