iTunes Auto-Censor Targets '50s Doo-Wop
Posted Nov 6th 2009 1:40PM by Warren Riddle
Despite its staid and strict stance against nudity and racy apps, Apple is continuing its unofficial practice of turning perfectly harmless words into demeaning slurs. Apple's censoring depends on a program that scans the iTunes database for dirty words, replacing the offending letters with asterisks. The problem with this auto-censorship is that it doesn't recognize context. As a result, innocent words are sometimes altered, ironically and immediately making people think of those alternate, more devious usages. According to the Guardian, the latest to fall prey to the asterisk is the style of music known as "doo-wop," whose name contains a word sometimes used as a slur against Italian-Americans. The word, with which many people were probably unfamiliar prior to the asterisk fiasco, appeared as "w*p" throughout iTunes as of this morning (it's since been changed back to doo-wop).
It's probably time to let the auto-censor go, Apple. Since you're now worth over $170 billion, you should probably be able to hire some human scanners. You know, ones that could actually discern between musical genres and racist terminology. [From: The Guardian]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
laroseel7 said 1:48PM on 11-06-2009
Apple is a multi national company, where are the ethics of runing a clean and respectible business? I have an Itunes account, but will probably never use it again after reading this article. I had higher hopes for this company, it is too bad, the respect for the customers, all of the customers comes after the price of vulgarity!! The bad taste in the mouth of many will be hard to get rid of after reading this article!
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