Apple fixes iOS issue that blocked searches for ‘Asian’ as adult content

The latest iOS 14.5 beta is fixing an issue that blocked searches for ‘Asian’ on the Safari app as adult content.

The issue was originally reported back in February. Users who turned on the ‘Limit Adult Websites’ filter under the Screen Time settings found that a search that included the word “Asian” would automatically be flagged as adult content and results would be blocked.

According to the report, the ‘limit adult websites’ setting stops Safari from displaying content or conducting searches for anything that includes the word “Asian” in the title. As the report notes, any such attempt is met with a message stating “the URL was blocked by a content filter.” According to The Independent, the feature also works to block searches containing the words “teen”, “amateur”, and “mature”:

“> The URL was blocked by a content filter”, the error message states. The message does not come up when searching for the words “black”, “white”, “Arab”, “Korean”, or “French” – other popular racial categories on pornographic websites – nor “schoolgirl”, but is activated when users search for “teen”, “amateur”, and “mature”.

As reported by Mashable, it appears that the latest iOS 14.5 beta fixes the issue and will no longer block search results when the word “Asian” is used. The outlet was able to search for things like “Asian,” “Asian Food,” and “Stop Asian Hate” without receiving the adult content warning.

According to developer Steven Shen, the issue may have existed as far back as December of 2019.

It’s unclear exactly how long the adult content filter issue has been around, but the problem became widely known in February. A number of major tech news outlets covered the adult content filter issue after a tweet from developer Steven Shen brought it to light.

In a direct message with Mashable, Shen confirmed that he actually first warned Apple that the iOS adult content filter was blocking searches containing the word “Asian” back on Dec. 7, 2019.

While users who came across the warning could easily click “Allow” to actually view their search results anyway, it is obvious that it was not necessary to begin with so it is good to see that Apple has fixed the issue.

The fix is part of iOS 14.5 which is still in beta, so regular users will still have to wait until iOS 14.5 is publicly available to receive the fix.