Apple Is Blocking Searches With “Asian” And “Teen” Terms Assuming It’s Porn

Apple’s built-in content blocker in Safari is reportedly blocking searches for everything that includes the keywords like “Teen” and “Asian”, assuming it’s porn-related.

For those unaware, Apple’s built-in content blocker in iOS automatically detects explicit and adult (pornographic) content to prevent children and adolescents from accessing those pages. However, the content blocker filter option is not enabled by default on iOS devices.

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Charlie Stigler, a Twitter user, who activated the filter on his iPhone 8 running iOS 13.3.1, found that he couldn’t search anything using the keyword “Asian”, “Asian hairstyles” or “Asian Food.” The same restriction was also confirmed by Softpedia who tested this on an iPhone 11 Pro running the latest iOS version. 

What is even worse than Apple’s built-in content blocker is that iOS is even blocking other keyword searches that the iPhone thinks may be related to porn, including “teen” and “teen mental health resources”, said Stigler.

“iOS built-in adult content filter blocks all searches with the keyword “Asian,” assuming it’s porn-related. This means a 12 y/o Chinese-American girl might Google “Asian hairstyles” and find out that her culture is blocked as ‘adult content,’” he wrote on Twitter. “Searches like “teen mental health resources” are also blocked, because “teen” is on the blacklist. Which is so dumb for a feature that’s probably being used BY TEENS!”

Weird bad thing:

iOS built-in adult content filter blocks all searches with the keyword "Asian,” assuming it's porn-related. Which means a 12 y/o Chinese-American girl might Google "Asian hairstyles" and find out that her culture is blocked as "adult content."

— Charlie Stigler (@charliestigler) February 18, 2020

Searches like "teen mental health resources" are also blocked, because "teen" is on the blacklist. Which is so dumb for a feature that's probably being used BY TEENS!

— Charlie Stigler (@charliestigler) February 18, 2020

However, what is interesting that the filter doesn’t restrict the search for the term “Asians” (with an ‘S’) even though the word is used by the adult website industry. 

If you own an iPhone and would want to test the feature, all you need to do is enable the “Limited Adult Websites” option at the following location:

Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content

Do share your thoughts and opinions on this weird feature in the comments section below.

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