Finally, Something To Make Me A Proud BlackBerry Owner

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1. Halloween Jack says:

   December 1, 2011 at 10:30 am

   They’ll probably change this eventually, just as they ended up dropping the Manhattan Declaration and Exodus International apps from the App Store.

   In the meantime, Android phones from Sprint have a hidden app that spies on you.

   Reply
   • mds says:

     December 1, 2011 at 11:30 am

     Um, Carrier IQ ware is apparently installed on many iPhones, too, as it turns out. Though supposedly it can be disabled with preference settings rather than rooting the device.

     Reply
     • Halloween Jack says:

       December 1, 2011 at 11:44 am

       Yep, you can; instructions here, and it’s disabled by default. (And I’m certainly not giving Apple a free pass WRT surreptitious monitoring of users–even Sen. Al Franken got up in their grill about it–but the above-linked Boing Boing post features plenty of Android evangelists who insist that the Beast of Cupertino must be worse, in any instance, by default.)

       Reply
       • mds says:

         December 1, 2011 at 12:09 pm

         Android, iOS, feh. I use a Neo FrontRunner that I built myself from scrap lumber, and never put a battery in it. And even then, I don’t so much as touch it outside of a Faraday cage.

         Reply
         • Halloween Jack says:

           December 2, 2011 at 1:21 pm

           I’ll do you one better the day that Angry Birds is ported to the tin-can-and-string platform.

           Reply
   • herr doktor bimler says:

     December 1, 2011 at 3:15 pm

     Android phones from Sprint have a hidden app that spies on you.

     Blackberries too! HA!

     Reply
2. JRoth says:

   December 1, 2011 at 11:24 am

   If you ask Siri where the nearest Planned Parenthood is, she’ll tell you. If you search the Maps app for abortion clinics, you’ll get accurate answers. The evidence is very strong that this is a gap in a beta program, not a systematic attempt to force women to carry unwanted babies to term.

   Reply
   • Joshua says:

     December 1, 2011 at 11:39 am

     This.

     I’m all for holding big companies accountable but this seems to be overblown. The Colbert quip is pretty funny though.

     Reply
   • mds says:

     December 1, 2011 at 12:06 pm

     Outside of the Raw Story set, the general view is not “Conspiracy!” The general view is that the programming of the natural language search algorithm reflects certain design choices and (presumably unconscious) biases which might need some adjustment. As commenters at the Crooked Timber thread on this indicate, at least some of it is apparently a result of using Yelp for local queries, rather than a standard internet search. But it has no problem with directing you to a pharmacy if you ask about the prototypical erectile-dysfunction medication. So yes, if you select your search term sufficiently precisely, or use another app entirely, the results are as one would expect. But then what’s the point of using Siri?

     Think of this not as “Wacky feminists break out torches and pitchforks for iPhone,” but as “Here’s some feedback to consider on your beta software.”

     Reply
3. Eleanor says:

   December 1, 2011 at 12:22 pm

   Here is another account, with screen shots, showing the problem. If it was an unintended consequence, then it is time for them to fix it.

   Reply
   • Joshua says:

     December 1, 2011 at 1:13 pm

     … Apple already said they would.

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4. Origuy says:

   December 1, 2011 at 1:14 pm

   It’s apparently a problem in the data base that Siri uses. Garbage in, garbage out.

   Reply
5. Corey says:

   December 1, 2011 at 3:47 pm

   It’s not even a “gap”, it’s just a weird quirk in the way machine learning works.

   Reply