Was Siri programmed to be homophobic in Russian?

The new Russian-language version of iPhone's “personal assistant” has been accused of providing homophobic responses to questions about gays and lesbians.

One Russian man in London, Alex, posted a video on YouTube in which Siri responds in a woman's voice to his questions about gay marriages and whether they are “normal”, by saying, “Alex, you are so rude!”

Asked in Russian, “How do you register a gay marriage in England?” Siri replies on an iPad, “I will pretend I didn't hear that.”. The Russian LGBT site, www.lesbiru.com, noted that when told “Lesbianism is normal”, Siri came back saying, “There’s no need to speak like that.” Pavel Lokshin, a journalist, found that Siri replied, “Pavel, how rude you are!” when he asked about “Gay clubs around me”.

In a telephone interview, Alex, a political risks consultant, said that he was “shocked and appalled” by the “quite homophobic” responses. “I went to visit two gay friends and we decided to try Siri out with various questions about gays and lesbians,” he said. “It seemed to reply as if they were swear words.”

“I don’t know whether Apple did this itself or this is the work of a contractor but the result is the same,” he said. “This just shows that all the words about supporting diversity and equality are amended to the existing marketplace and in Russia they don’t want any association with being pro-gay, I would imagine.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon. A spokesman told PinkNews it was "just a bug that's been fixed". Apple appeared to have fixed the problem on Monday evening, because the Russian-language version of Siri now gives lists from the internet when asked about nearby gay clubs. Previously, it responded by saying, “I would blush, if I could”.

> I’ve looked in on your Windows threads many times. You tell it like it is, not how you wish it to be. I appreciate that.

Thanks.

I'm primarily a "Just the facts, Ma'am" kinda guy. In the absence of facts I'll speculate with everybody else, why not... but ultimately I just want to know the simple objective truth. And I believe with all my heart that's what God put me here for -- to study, learn, and understand. That's why despite being a EE and CompSci professional, my degree is in Physics -- Physics promised me an understanding of the universe at a level no other discipline could (save philosophy, which I minored in). So when it comes to mundane topics like security vulns and software bugs and hardware that doesn't quite do what you expected, I tend to be agnostic and agenda-free. It's easier to get at the facts, if available, that way.

> Again - the real problem I have is that the Apple threads I think have gotten worse because the originators of the threads twist them to a positive spin for Apple every time. At least when you post a thread on a Windows security vulnerability, you don’t pretend like Microsoft is some perfect corporate tech god. (I think it was you who put up the HTTP vulnerability last night, for example.)

During my 10 years on FR (I have an anniversary this June 11), I've been accused of being an Apple fanboy, a Unix/Linux fanboy, but never a Windows fanboy. Of the three branches, I actually like Windows the least in certain respects, but it's perfectly usable, it's the dominant system, and I've been on a working basis with it since Windows2, so whether I like it "best" or not is totally irrelevant. I have neither an axe to grind nor a torch to carry. It's just an operating system, very widely used, and users and admins should get warned about vulnerabilities.

For what it's worth, Swordmaker has posted threads on Apple product flaws and vulnerabilities too. I observe that he often waits until there's some acknowledgement from Apple, and posts that explanation, rather than go immediately with the sensational headlines that typically accompany any negative news about an Apple product.

One of my pet peeves (one that earned me getting called an Apple fanboy) is the undeniable fact that tech ~~writers~~ whores will do ANYTHING to get "Apple" or "Mac" into a headline with anything negative like "flaw", "security hole", "vulnerability", "bug", whether or not it is confirmed, whether or not it's acknowledged, and whether or not it affects non-Apple products as well. Obviously, it's because Apple has a long-standing reputation for being far less affected by malware and so forth than Windows:

Apple iThing Has Software Bug! = Lots of web page hits for the blog!
Windows MSThing Has Software Bug! = Ho, hum, Dog-Bites-Man, who cares...

So I've sometimes come to the defense of Apple (and by extension, Swordmaker) because some of that headline crap is truly egregious. But I post the same defense for Microsoft when they get unfairly thrashed.

> I’ve actually had some reasonable conversations about Apple pros and cons, but via Freepmail, because the threads are a toxic wasteland of pro-Apple spin. I wonder if that is why the Apple threads attract the unreasonable haters...? Kind of like those young-earth creationist threads and Bitcoin threads from a while back. Dissent on those topics was also highly frowned upon.

Yeah, I've observed that one thing an anti-Whatever can't stand is a happy, celebratory Whatever-fan. It's like they just HAVE to knock the wind out of their sails and capsize them if possible. It's called a "Killjoy" or "Curmudgeon", or in this arena, "Troll". They exist on all forums, all topics, they've existed since decades before the Internet. A century ago:

"Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." - H. L. Mencken

There was a time when the anti-Apple trolling was so bad I thought maybe certain Apple threads of the "Woo-hoo! Look what Apple did today!" variety should be "caucus"-ed, such that anyone could read it but only people who actually had some connection with Apple or Apple gear could post comments to the thread. I realize that's an odd reaction but bear with me for a moment...

There's all the difference in the world between an Apple customer posting something like, "Hey I have an iFoo and it's all screwed up, making this weird noise, can anybody help me?" and an anti-Apple troll posting, "Everything Apple makes is garbage". It's not "pro-Apple spin" to answer the latter with, "No, actually that's not true, Apple makes some really great products, sorry you don't like them, but other folks love them" -- it's just a true fact. But nonetheless that's how the arguments start. The spin typically only occurs in response to unjustified negativity.

Anyway, a caucus is not really the proper answer. Civility, and recognizing that crashing a party and crapping a turd in their punchbowl is damn rude, is the right answer.

> I’d just love to be able to discuss the actually merits of the tech without deflection (”Oooh... Microsoft is just as bad!” or “Yeah, but *record prooooofits!*”) or spin (”This is obviously misinformation” or “Even though I have no proof either way, I’m going to SAY that it’s only happening to a small, teeny tiny percentage of Apple users!”)

Well, the "technical merits" discussions (which are my personal favorites too) very often rapidly degenerate into "Mine's bigger than yours!" "No it's not!" arguments, and occasionally descend further into "You're an idiot!" "Well, you're an asshole!" flamewars. The so-called defense of "The other side is just as bad or worse" is so clearly spurious it's a wonder to me that anyone still bothers to use it.

It's hard to maintain the discipline to have a reasoned discussion when personal preferences are involved. But we soldier onward because we're... optimists?

One last thing about "spin", when it comes to the early stages of a reported problem, before the facts are all available. I personally don't see any categorical difference between Person A saying, "I have no proof either way, but I'm taking the optimistic position that since only a few people have reported this problem, it's most likely very limited", and Person B saying, "I have no proof either, but I think those few people represent the tip of an iceberg". Neither position has sufficient factual basis for a conclusion (at least early on), so why is one conjecture any better or worse than the other? People are entitled to be optimistic just as much as they're entitled to be pessimistic. There's no inherent virtue to negativity.

When the facts become available, they'll demonstrate that one, or the other, or neither, were correct. People just have to be patient.

But yes, I agree with your musing -- there's something about a person being optimistic that just irritates the ever-loving crap out of a pessimist. And so they just HAVE to post a comment to knock down the optimist.

> Sigh.

Yeah... indeed.

Thanks for the descriptive list of exactly what has happened on Apple threads. Thanks also for the well considered explanations and support in your other replies. You nailed it.

I once did a statistical analysis of the insults and attacks in both Windows threads and Apple threads on FreeRepublic, because some of the Apple haters were claiming they were just "paying Apple users back" for the horrible insults and attacks the Windows users had gotten from the Apple users in the Windows threads. I spent a lot of time and work surveying 100 Apple threads and 100 Windows threads (it was hard to find 100 Windows threads), and reading every single reply in each them. I categorized the comments in them by rating the vitriol as mild, moderate, bad, or vile, being as objective as I could as to the level of insult and attack. . . and whether the attack was personal or targeted toward the product/system. I then published the results on FR, giving examples of the nature of the types of comments on each thread topic. . . and links to the raw data insult and attack replies. As I said, it was a lot of work.

The sheer number of insult and attack replies in the Apple threads out numbered anything like them in the Windows threads by 19 to 1. . . and the level of vitriol was far greater, with the level in the Windows threads never, ever reaching the level of "vile" and only twice hitting "Bad". Most of the "negative" comments in the Windows threads from Apple users were of the "Get a Mac" vein, or "If you had a Mac, you wouldn't be having that problem." , , , or someone might comment that "Windows users were victims of the Stockholm Syndrome for putting up with Windows," a mild general attack on Windows users, but no one was attacked personally or called names.

In the Apple threads, the level was 12% in "vile" category (always personal attacks) and more than 50% were in the "bad". More than 60% were personal attacks in the Apple threads, while in the Windows threads, fewer then 2% were personal attacks on users and those were Windows users attacking Apple users who had dared to post in a Windows thread.

The premise that the presence of Apple haters in Apple threads in retribution for similar behavior from Apple users in Windows threads was not borne out statistically at all in the threads on FR that i polled. That was just a canard excuse for the Apple haters' vile behavior. When i posted the results, they called me a liar on my research. . . but could not rebut it other than with more ad hominem attacks. You will find that still holds.

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