Apple Siri and Maps Now Don't Include
Adoption Alternatives in Abortion Searches
Ping!
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Posted on 02/02/2016 7:02:53 AM PST by wagglebee
CUPERTINO, California, February 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Want to abort your baby? There's an app for that.
Apple has "fixed" its software, "Siri," to correctly interpret inquiries for abortion business locations.
"Siri" is an "intelligent personal assistant" on the Apple iPhone that you can use to find pretty much anything. Simply say, "Where can I get a good steak?," and the Siri software will list steakhouses near your location.
But say, "Where can I get an abortion?," and, since 2011, Siri would look up "abortion" –but because abortion facilities are deceptive in their titles (they never use the A-word, but always "Women's Health" or something similar), Siri would then respond, "I don't find any abortion clinics."
In some cases, to the horror of abortion activists, Siri would list pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, because some do have "abortion alternatives" in their title or description.
Abortionists consider a mobile app giving out crisis pregnancy centers' contact information intolerable. Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards called it an "insidious" barrier, a "hazard," and "a threat that none of us should take lightly." She demanded that Apple "fix this immediately."
Apple explained that it was not an intentional omission and said the company will work on fixing it by more accurately categorizing abortion businesses.
Also pushing for a fix was the abortion activist organization Sea Change Program, which worked with associate professors at the University of California San Francisco to put pressure on Apple to change its search algorithm. The organization says it exists "to reduce stigma around abortions."
Last September, Apple announced its new iOS 9 software. With the new software came "Apple Nearby" for their maps, and a promise of more "relevant" search listings.
Sea Change Program and UC San Francisco associate professors sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook in November, saying, "Siri's anti-choice suggestions is [sic] alarming, and contributes [sic] to the stigma surrounding abortion care in our country."
Apple has now created a category, "Family Services," within Apple Nearby. Under "Family Services" are listed abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood.
Now the Siri software lists abortion businesses. Fast Company tested the software last month and reports that the software has indeed been amended at least in some cities.
Other issues with the Siri software included giving people suggestions about a good place to hide a dead body.
I wonder if you’d get the same results if you queried “bomb factories.” Minus the Baptist Church ...
Agreed.
The irony is that there remains such a stigma associated with “abortion” that it was the desire of the abortion industry to soften the language it uses to describe itself (”Woman’s Health Services”) that caused the problems and required the rewriting of the search algorithm into something more complex than it needed to be.
The fact that the abortion industry refuses to identify itself for what it is happens to be very telling ...
knowing our govm’t they would show up at my office looking for a white conservative terrorist with in an hour of the query
Nutso clinic bombers everywhere say “Thank You!”
They'll be mothers who killed their babies.
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I don't think that Apple is the organization that has actually done this.
Apple contracts with third parties to provide the data for Siri and Maps. Currently Apple uses Yelp, Bing, Tom-Tom, and Wofram Alpha under license as the search engines to provide the data for Siri and Apple Maps core information. Apple itself is not going to create a category of "family services" for abortion services. That comes from these database services.
I am curious how any organization with "abortion" in its name or its meta-data can be excluded from the search engines. Many of the pro-life agencies who offer abortion alternatives do indeed use the word in their names, and certainly use it in their literature, on their web pages, and in their meta data that a web crawler would identify.
This implies that any exclusionary blacklisting has to have been done proactively, and retro-actively after the search engines found the locations, by humans deliberately removing these organizations from the search engine databases for political reasons. . . Censorship and restraint of trade. Typical Left-wing prohibition behavior where they claim to be "Pro-Choice" but only when that choice is to choose abortion.
Cupertino....liberal drones
No God
True of most tech
I bet in the 50s you could find most Skunkworks or Bell Labs or NASA nerds sitting in church with their families
Now most tech is God deniers and top management anti Christian
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