[alpaca128]

That is a problem, but with the algorithm or its flawed application.

I don't think it's too far-fetched to expect one of the largest and richest tech companies worldwide to be able to tell with decent accuracy how the word "asian" was used. The sophistication of their blocking method is basically on par with a basic word filter that doesn't even attempt to avoid the Scunthorpe problem.

I mean, we're not talking about reaching 99% accuracy or really advanced linguistic detection. When a company sells smart home voice assistants surely they can be expected to tell "asian food" from more lewd content apart. Keep a list of naughty websites, track what web searches regularly return those as result and then target those specific queries. Or throw some Machine Learning at it, might as well put their enthusiastically marketed AI processing unit to use.

Accurate content filtering is hard. But completely blocking anything using one of the most common words in the language just because it frequently links to porn sites? Come on.

[porphyra]

Yes, the algorithm is definitely inappropriate and too basic. However let's not overlook that it is a societal problem that a large amount of the US population does not care about Asians at all apart from porn. When there is 100x more searches for "asian hotties" than for "asian history", you can get 99% accuracy just by blacklisting the word "asian".

[potatoman22]

These claims seem pretty far fetched. Do you have any evidence that American's mostly only care about Asians because of porn, or that there are 100x more searches for Asian porn than other Asian topics? Seems pretty unreasonable to me

[porphyra]

The fact that Reddit's search algorithms and Apple's filters find a strong correlation between Asians and porn suggests that to be the case. The 100x was just a rhetorical example.

[alpaca128]

Your point about correlation with porn shows absolutely nothing.

Every site hosting pornographic content finds a strong correlation between anything and porn. I literally just searched "foo" on Reddit with NSFW turned on and the results are 100% porn, ranging from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to Foo Fighters related...content.

Do people watch porn with asians? Yes, and also with about every second noun that appears in a dictionary. I highly doubt Apple's filters are applied in a fair way. Do they block queries containing gingers? Germans? Japanese? Which continents, ethnicities and countries does Apple find too sexy? I don't think a company should be in a position where this kind of question has to be asked.

[porphyra]

What? Searching for "foo" had no porn results. "German" only had two porn results out of the top 50. "Asian" was almost all porn. I did all three searches with the same logged-in user with "show NSFW" enabled in the user settings.

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/bjtDEfG

[Rule35]

> However let's not overlook that it is a societal problem that a large amount of the US population does not care about Asians at all apart from porn.

Why is this a problem? The premise was hate, but now the goalposts have moved to indifference.

Have you studied Romanian history or are they beneath you racially? Or, do you disagree with the premise of the question?

[porphyra]

I would be fine with people not caring about Asians if at the same time they didn't watch so much Asian porn.

I would also be fine if people watched a lot of Asian porn if at the same time they cared about Asian culture and history.

But the fact that people disproportionately watch Asian porn while not caring about Asian people is pretty weird and racist to me.

[Rule35]

Why should these things be related? Novelty is actually one of the things that sexually attracts men so even if porn viewers were all amateur historians these would probably be anti-correlated.

But why does it matter anyway? Is it bad to like pierogis without having an in-depth understanding of the holodomor? Should we stop listening to foreign music until we ensure we have a "proper" understanding of the political issues the artists grew up under?

> But the fact that people disproportionately watch Asian porn while not caring about Asian people is pretty weird and racist to me.

Actually, incest porn appears to be the most watched. What does that say about the exploitation of the incestuous?