Ninjawords Dictionary censorship

Ninjawords has rolled out a Dictionary app for the iPhone, and submitted it in May. However it took longer than most app for approval as it has certain swear words. It’s approval took a lengthy process, which received “17+” age rating but also having removed a number of “objectionable” words.

This got the attention of cyberspace on once again Apple stringent Apps policy.

Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller was quoted, “You are correct that the Ninjawords application should not have needed to be censored while also receiving a 17+ rating, but that was a result of the developers’ actions, not Apple’s. I believe that the Apple app review team’s original recommendation to the developer to submit the Ninjawords application, without censoring it, to the App Store once parental controls was implemented would have been the best course of action for all; Wiktionary.org is an open, ever-changing resource and filtering the content does not seem reasonable or necessary. Apple’s goals remain aligned with customers and developers — to create an innovative applications platform on the iPhone and iPod touch and to assist many developers in making as much great software as possible for the iPhone App Store. While we may not always be perfect in our execution of that goal, our efforts are always made with the best intentions, and if we err we intend to learn and quickly improve.”

As you can see, Apple is adamant and defended their policy, and Apple advised the developer that it would need to censor the application in order to meet with a successful approval.

Ninjas are three things: 1). They’re smart; 2) They’re quick; 3) They’re deadly accurate. Ninjawords is a dictionary for the iPhone built on these principles. Matchstick Software, the developer behind the app, says they made it because they saw that the low-cost dictionaries on the App Store are slow, cluttered, and all use the same bad data source (WordNet) for their definitions.

Meanwhile, even though the Ninjawords app for the iPhone omits all the “objectionable” words as deemed by the App Store reviewers, Apple continues to rate the application with a 17+ age rating.