Apple's Parental Control Setting Doesn't Want Users To Search For 'Asian' Things

Apple has been in the tech industry for decades. And through that many years, it has polished and improved its ecosystem, to make everything better.

But not so much better that its family-friendly content controls are somehow exaggerating things, and seemingly overzealous and prejudiced. The company that wanted its products to be safely used by kids, is somehow making kinks out of ethnicity.

And in this case, it's Asians.

As first reported by The Independent, among the content controls built into iOS' Screen Time feature, one is meant to limit access to adult websites.

Here, it somehow also blocks users from searching for the word “Asian” in Safari and other browsers installed on the device.

The block doesn’t just disallow searches for that one word, as it also applies to many Asian-related words.

Users cannot use Google Search to search for any phrase including the word, for instance, with an error that says "it is restricted."

From “Asian food” to terms like “Asian fusion,” “Asian diaspora,” “Asian communities”, “Asian countries” and “Asian politics” are all off limits. “Asian cultures” and even “Asian hairstyles” are also prohibited.

While "Asian cuisine" is not allowed, "Asian restaurants" is allowed.

Weirdly enough, the message does not show when users search for the word “black”, “white”, “Arab”, “Korean”, or “French.”

These words are also common in racial categories on pornographic websites.

Replace Asian with “European,” “African,” “Indian” or “Arab” also resolved just fine.

The message however, again pops up when users search for some other popular categories, like “teen”, “amateur” and “mature”.

The issue was first discovered by by Steven Shen, an iOS developer and computer science graduate from Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy.

“On iOS, if you turn on 'Limit Adult Website' under Screen Time->Content Restrictions, Safari blocks any website URL containing the word 'asian'. Seriously, go try it, it’s unbelievable. I filed a Feeback a long time ago. Nothing changed”, Shen tweeted.

This Apple’s content settings are also available on its Mac computers, which run MacOS. But on those devices and when the setting is activated, search results for the word “Asian” were still available.

As for why Apple is doing this, is probably because the word "Asian" on the internet for adults, has been tied to numerous fetishes and porn categories and websites.

Starting iOS 14, users have the options to limit screen time settings.

Under those settings include the content and privacy sections, in which parents can limit web content between “unrestricted access”, “limit adult websites”, and “allowed websites only”.

Selecting to “limit adult websites” will restrict Safari, as well as any other web browser installed on the iPhone, from browsing adult websites.

This is a nice thing to have.

But at this point, it is unclear how Apple decides which words should or should not fall under the “adult” label on its iPhones and iPads.

"I think it's unlikely someone intentionally hard coded this. Probably the result of AI. Similar to how facial recognition has trouble working on people with darker skin tones", Shen told The Independent.