This article at Wired details the latest bizarre chapter in Google’s censorship of its Android mobile device ecosystem. There’s a new list of bad words baked into the latest Android version, and just as with the bizarre censorship of the search suggestions Google makes when you’re typing a search into its web page, Android will refuse to autocomplete anything on this new edition of the bad words list:

There’s no “sex” at the Googleplex.

Type or swipe the word on the latest version of Android’s Google Keyboard – or for that matter “intercourse,” “coitus,” “screwing” or even “lovemaking” – and the web giant’s predictive algorithm will offer no help.

These are just a few examples from an obsessive, and often baffling list of more than 1,400 English words that Google has quietly deemed inappropriate for Android users.

…

Taken as a whole, Google’s list suggests not only a surprising discomfort with sexuality, but also reproductive health and undergarments. Words like “panty,” “braless,” “Tampax,” “lactation,” and “preggers” are censored along with sexual health vocabulary like “uterus” and “STI.”

“I try to Swype-type the word ‘condom’ and I get ‘condition’ or ‘confusion,'” said Jillian York, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There is no context in which that makes any sense. Grow up, Android.”

It’s trivial now, but pay attention. Just how much do we want to allow our language and culture to be shaped by invisible “protective” algorithms built into our devices at a deep software level? To whom, precisely, are we granting this new power over our memetic space, and why are we granting it?

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