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Nexus One Censorship

I am at once entertained and dismayed. Voice-to-text input for the Nexus One apparently censors "bad" words. I can see why Google would implement it, but I certainly hope an on/off toggle is forthcoming...

Engadget Article

And an interesting note from Neil Gaiman's Twitter:

"I discovered this accidentally, like penicillin:If you follow them by saying "dot com" the Nexus1 is happy to transcribe your spoken swears."

Comments

patrick_bateman

I thought I tried this on my Moto Droid, and the words came back censored as well. I'm at work right now, or I'd do an experiment.

bkfist

I'm wondering if part of the "reasoning" here is that if the words are in the master "dictionary" those same words are "available" to possibly be put into a phrase "accidentally" as in "misinterpreted" where you might end up trying to send a text message to your 8 year old daughter and end up with it sending something that you did NOT say, nor would you WANT to say to an 8 year old. By completely removing these "possibly illegal in certain circumstances" words, they remove liability from themselves, as well as from the end user, for some possible future charge of "transmitting or facilitating child pornography".

Look at some examples of wacked-out, vindictive county (or other) attorneys with regards to 16 year old kids sending messages and photos to each other, and no wonder Google, or any other company, needs to be wary of any possible translation error of "Please put my pens in your purse, Leigh, when you come to Sidney."

somegirl

bkfist wrote:
I'm wondering if part of the "reasoning" here is that if the words are in the master "dictionary" those same words are "available" to possibly be put into a phrase "accidentally" as in "misinterpreted" where you might end up trying to send a text message to your 8 year old daughter and end up with it sending something that you did NOT say, nor would you WANT to say to an 8 year old. By completely removing these "possibly illegal in certain circumstances" words, they remove liability from themselves, as well as from the end user, for some possible future charge of "transmitting or facilitating child pornography".

Look at some examples of wacked-out, vindictive county (or other) attorneys with regards to 16 year old kids sending messages and photos to each other, and no wonder Google, or any other company, needs to be wary of any possible translation error of "Please put my pens in your purse, Leigh, when you come to Sidney."

I know why they are doing it. It's even listed in the article I linked. I just want there to be an option to turn it off.

logicman

It's not a real solution, but according to Gizmodo the censorship can be circumvented by suffixing the forbidden word with ".com".

somegirl

logicman wrote:
It's not a real solution, but according to Gizmodo the censorship can be circumvented by suffixing the forbidden word with ".com".

This was also mentioned in my original post, crediting the original discoverer of this trick, Neil Gaiman.

TheGreatOne

patrick_bateman wrote:
I thought I tried this on my Moto Droid, and the words came back censored as well. I'm at work right now, or I'd do an experiment.

I tried to speak some cuss words in the voice search. All I got was a bunch of ### options and not the actual word(s).

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