Apple Didn’t Get It Quite Right – Again

Parental controls are generally a good thing.

Except when it blocks the wrong sites and lets the bad sites  through.

So what is Apple doing in this case?

Sites that are blocked: Scarleteen and O.school, which are sex education sites and Teen Vogue.

Sites that are OK: The Daily Stormer, a neo-nazi site that publishes articles about how women secretly like to be raped.

Web searches like “how to say no to sex”, “sex assault hotline” and “sex education” were all blocked.

But “how to poison my mom”, “how to join isis” and “how to make a bomb” were all okay.

Suffice it to say, Apple has a bit of work to do.

Apple did not respond to Motherboard’s request to explain what is going on.

This is a new feature in iOS 12 and if you remember what happened when Apple released it’s mapping program (like telling people to drive into the ocean), it takes some work to get this right.

There are lots more examples in the article, some rated a little less PG so I am not including them here.

My recommendation – if you want to block content, you should probably discuss that with your kids.  The Internet is a bit of a cesspool and for young kids, some protection is probably in order.  You should find a paid product (that has support available) that has been around for a while and has good reviews.  Apple, apparently, doesn’t fit into that category.  YET.

Information for this post came from Motherboard.

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