
Is Google censoring 'Falun Gong' voice typing? - sebastianconcpt
https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/Googles-Voice-Typing-System-Blocks-Falun.mp4
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centimeter
I noticed the other day that Apple has added some weird censorship terms to
their swipe keyboard. They used to just censor “swear words” like “fuck”, but
they seem to have added some additional phrases that I can’t come up with a
charitable explanation for. For example, of the phrases “black man”, “black
woman”, “white man”, “white woman”, you can _only_ type “black man” on the
swipe keyboard. If you try to swipe type one of the others, it will always
change one of the two words to something else.

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bogwog
Wow I just tested that and you're right. That's a weirdly specific bug.

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ta17711771
"Bug"

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Villodre
Well it’s no use arguing if they’re censoring it or not: it’s pretty obvious
they are.

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wrnr
This need not be a directive set by google management, it could be individual
speech annotators censoring the transcripts. I've worked with systems like
this and remember a group of mormon house wifes not being font of curse words.

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dbsmith83
I wonder if anything else happens on the backend when a user attempts to say
these banned words...

While other nations are condemning China for their actions in Hong Kong, once
again, we see Google developing solutions for authoritarian regimes under the
guise of "complying with local laws". More like complying with
authoritarianism. Instead of joining the world to put pressure on China,
Google is enabling them. Pretty shameful, I think.

This probably won't score any brownie points with the US government while they
are being investigated (unless the gov't actually wants Google to do anything
to get more integrated with China for intelligence reasons, which I could see
as a possibility).

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dbsmith83
The reason I wonder about what is happening on the backend:

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/14/17861962/google-china-
dra...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/14/17861962/google-china-dragonfly-
censorship-search-engine-phone-number-link-report)

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keccers
For what it's worth — my Chinese-speaking friend tried this on his iPhone
using voice dictation _in Chinese_. He was able to voice dictate 法轮功 — 'Falun
Gong' in mainland (not traditional) Chinese with no problems.

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dbsmith83
But what country does your friend reside in?

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keccers
United States.

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bpolverini
What if someone lives in Taiwan or the United States or Singapore or anywhere
outside of the PRC? This is exactly the type of sociotechnical pressure the
PRC wants to enforce over its diaspora.

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crazypython
Falun Gong is a religious movement banned by the Chinese Communist Party.

