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Wow, this was not what I was expecting when I originally read the headline. Initially I assumed it was just a pile-on media outrage about Apple, thinking "how

Wow, this was not what I was expecting when I originally read the headline. Initially I assumed it was just a pile-on media outrage about Apple, thinking "how is it surprising, pretty much every engraving service bans certain things that are either vulgar or trademark infringing". Reading the article scrapped all of those presumptions I had. For those who want quick numbers from the article, here is the table showing the number of terms banned in each relevant region for engraving: * 1,045 keywords blocked in mainland China * 542 in Hong Kong * 397 in Taiwan * Japan, Canada and the US had between 170 and 260 filtered words The most egregious example imo was the one banning engraving "8964" (literally just a 4-digit number), because it references the date of Tiananmen Square Massacre. Not the name of a politician or some living person. Just a date that is being forcefully attempted to get erased from history.

istingray 5y ago
Erased - by Apple themselves "Replying to the group, Ms Horvath said Apple's rules depended on the region - and "no third parties or government agencies have been involved in the process." Nothing to see here says Apple's Chief Privacy officer Jane Horvath
- filoleg 5y ago
  I have zero idea what their Chief Privacy Officer was trying to achieve with that statement. If they think that makes them look better, that's a pretty wild assumption on their end. In my eyes, even if we take that statement as truth, it makes them look even worse off than not saying it at all.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Look better to who? Customers in the west or the Chinese government?
    - istingray 5y ago
      It does have a bend the knee feel to me. "Acknowledge we are controlling you without saying we're controlling you".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- r00fus 5y ago
  This can still be the case that the CCP simply has a "recommendation list" and companies are expected to comply and self-censor.
labster 5y ago
> The most egregious example imo was the one banning engraving "8964" (literally just a 4-digit number) Nah, Apple should just ban all four digit numbers so people don’t engrave their passcodes, because the sticky note kept falling off. The most egregious example to me was censoring a random common surname, Zhang.
crazygringo 5y ago
I mean, not sure what you expected -- it's China. This is not really news... any company operating in China follows what the government requires (whether explicitly or implicitly), and censoring Tiananman is top of list. I don't see any outrage to direct towards Apple here. Direct it towards China. Unless you think every company in the Western world (not just Apple) ought to cease doing any and all business with China, both in manufacturing and sales. Because I don't see anything here that Apple does that other Western companies operating in China don't.
- istingray 5y ago
  The outrage directed at Apple might be coming from this quote from their Chief Privacy Officer "no third parties or government agencies have been involved in the process." Why lie?
  - filoleg 5y ago
    Let me preface this first by saying that I find this entire situation to be abhorrent, and that reply by Apple's Chief Privacy Officer to be useless at best and poor at worst. However, there is a significant case for why it might not be a lie (not that it makes that statement any better, but that's beside the point). If you look at the original source material[0] (which is a really interesting piece to read in full in general) instead of the article about it in the OP , it tries to understand the situation in much more detail than the BBC report. And their reasonable conclusion was that Apple just grabbed that random list from somewhere or reverse engineered it from some other product, because it contains some terms in chinese that are plain weird or have no explanation, such as 5 different random names with the last name "Zhang". The part about Canadian vs. US banlist was fairly interesting too, in terms of how The Citizen Lab analyzed the whole thing. Overall, I would count that report as a must-read. It is way more interesting and comprehensive than the BBC article about it. Not even mentioning that it goes really deep into the methodology of how the conclusions were arrived at and how those banlists were reverse-engineered. 0. https://citizenlab.ca/2021/08/engrave-danger-an-analysis-of-apple-engraving-censorship-across-six-regions/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/08/engrave-danger-an-analysis-of-... P.S. I wish this thread was linking to the source material aka full analysis post by The Citizen Lab instead of the barebones and weak BBC article about it. It covers way more ground than just what's mentioned in the BBC article. And it is the primary source, after all.
fvdessen 5y ago
> The most egregious example imo was the one banning engraving "8964" (literally just a 4-digit number) I have not found the full list for EU/USA but I suspect that 1488 might be censored in those regions. Looking at the other examples it seems to me that in communist states the anti-communist words are censored, and in democratic states, it’s the anti-democratic ones. In the communist state, the state provides the naughty list, while in the democratic states, the demos does, but in the end both systems censor in their own ways the expression of the symbols of the most feared opposition movements
- filoleg 5y ago
  The full list[0] of terms banned in the US is in the official Citizen Lab repo. There isn't a single number on that list, so no, 1488 isn't censored. >in communist states the anti-communist words are censored, and in democratic states, it’s the anti-democratic ones I guess we can add to that list of anti-communist words things as 人权 (human rights) and 新聞自由 (Freedom of the press), because those are banned by Apple for engravings in China too[1]. Then look at the words banned in the US, for comparison. None of those are "anti-democratic" or even related to politics, it is all just vulgarity-related words, such as words referring to genitalia or expletives. To be fair, I have to revise my earlier statement about "8964" being the most egregious example. I posted that comment before I noticed 人权 (human rights) on that list. 0. https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/apple/us.txt https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/ap... 1. https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/apple/cn.txt https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/ap...

istingray 5y ago

Erased - by Apple themselves "Replying to the group, Ms Horvath said Apple's rules depended on the region - and "no third parties or government agencies have been involved in the process." Nothing to see here says Apple's Chief Privacy officer Jane Horvath

filoleg 5y ago
I have zero idea what their Chief Privacy Officer was trying to achieve with that statement. If they think that makes them look better, that's a pretty wild assumption on their end. In my eyes, even if we take that statement as truth, it makes them look even worse off than not saying it at all.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Look better to who? Customers in the west or the Chinese government?
  - istingray 5y ago
    It does have a bend the knee feel to me. "Acknowledge we are controlling you without saying we're controlling you".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 5y ago
This can still be the case that the CCP simply has a "recommendation list" and companies are expected to comply and self-censor.

labster 5y ago

> The most egregious example imo was the one banning engraving "8964" (literally just a 4-digit number) Nah, Apple should just ban all four digit numbers so people don’t engrave their passcodes, because the sticky note kept falling off. The most egregious example to me was censoring a random common surname, Zhang.

crazygringo 5y ago

I mean, not sure what you expected -- it's China. This is not really news... any company operating in China follows what the government requires (whether explicitly or implicitly), and censoring Tiananman is top of list. I don't see any outrage to direct towards Apple here. Direct it towards China. Unless you think every company in the Western world (not just Apple) ought to cease doing any and all business with China, both in manufacturing and sales. Because I don't see anything here that Apple does that other Western companies operating in China don't.

istingray 5y ago
The outrage directed at Apple might be coming from this quote from their Chief Privacy Officer "no third parties or government agencies have been involved in the process." Why lie?
- filoleg 5y ago
  Let me preface this first by saying that I find this entire situation to be abhorrent, and that reply by Apple's Chief Privacy Officer to be useless at best and poor at worst. However, there is a significant case for why it might not be a lie (not that it makes that statement any better, but that's beside the point). If you look at the original source material[0] (which is a really interesting piece to read in full in general) instead of the article about it in the OP , it tries to understand the situation in much more detail than the BBC report. And their reasonable conclusion was that Apple just grabbed that random list from somewhere or reverse engineered it from some other product, because it contains some terms in chinese that are plain weird or have no explanation, such as 5 different random names with the last name "Zhang". The part about Canadian vs. US banlist was fairly interesting too, in terms of how The Citizen Lab analyzed the whole thing. Overall, I would count that report as a must-read. It is way more interesting and comprehensive than the BBC article about it. Not even mentioning that it goes really deep into the methodology of how the conclusions were arrived at and how those banlists were reverse-engineered. 0. https://citizenlab.ca/2021/08/engrave-danger-an-analysis-of-apple-engraving-censorship-across-six-regions/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/08/engrave-danger-an-analysis-of-... P.S. I wish this thread was linking to the source material aka full analysis post by The Citizen Lab instead of the barebones and weak BBC article about it. It covers way more ground than just what's mentioned in the BBC article. And it is the primary source, after all.

fvdessen 5y ago

> The most egregious example imo was the one banning engraving "8964" (literally just a 4-digit number) I have not found the full list for EU/USA but I suspect that 1488 might be censored in those regions. Looking at the other examples it seems to me that in communist states the anti-communist words are censored, and in democratic states, it’s the anti-democratic ones. In the communist state, the state provides the naughty list, while in the democratic states, the demos does, but in the end both systems censor in their own ways the expression of the symbols of the most feared opposition movements

filoleg 5y ago
The full list[0] of terms banned in the US is in the official Citizen Lab repo. There isn't a single number on that list, so no, 1488 isn't censored. >in communist states the anti-communist words are censored, and in democratic states, it’s the anti-democratic ones I guess we can add to that list of anti-communist words things as 人权 (human rights) and 新聞自由 (Freedom of the press), because those are banned by Apple for engravings in China too[1]. Then look at the words banned in the US, for comparison. None of those are "anti-democratic" or even related to politics, it is all just vulgarity-related words, such as words referring to genitalia or expletives. To be fair, I have to revise my earlier statement about "8964" being the most egregious example. I posted that comment before I noticed 人权 (human rights) on that list. 0. https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/apple/us.txt https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/ap... 1. https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/apple/cn.txt https://github.com/citizenlab/chat-censorship/blob/master/ap...