Apple's Porn Filter Makes Finding Asian Food Difficult

The iOS 13 content filter is supposed to prevent dirty pages from being accessed on the Internet. However, the search term restriction is far too strict, as one user has found: ordinary search combinations, for example with the word "Asian", are completely blocked.

The developer Charlie Stigler has pointed out on Twitter that the content filter of iOS 13 is too strict. With the filter function, Google searches for supposedly offensive terms can be blocked within the screen time limit, for example, to prevent children and adolescents from accessing pornographic content.

Annoyingly, however, the function in the Safari browser blocks almost all search combinations that contain the term "Asian" - including "Asian food", "Asian history" and other combinations. However, the term "Asians" is not blocked. The combination "Asian NFL" is also available; it is unclear why this is possible.

Also, not shown are searches for the term "teen". The pornographic background is visible here, but such a strict blocking also prevents teenagers from being able to find out about certain health aspects, for example, or to search for other harmless terms.

The filter is not consistently programmed to the end

A user reports in Stigler's thread that the search works without problems if he switches the search engine in Safari to Yahoo or Bing. It is also possible to navigate to the pages manually - the filter not only seems to be too strict with certain search terms but is also poorly implemented.

It is currently unknown to what extent Apple will change the algorithm. The list of blocked search terms is managed centrally by Apple, users have no way to activate certain terms anyway.