Siri Doesn’t Do Gay

Ask Siri in Russian about gay stuff and she blanks you. I’d blush if I could, she says. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. This emotion should be rated negative. So you don’t exist, but she says it nice.

Russia doesn’t acknowledge gay people—government acts like they’re not there, media treats them like infection, kids hunt anything different. It’s the country. But Apple put Siri in millions of Russian pockets already programmed to agree. Someone made that call.

There are young people in Russia who like someone of the same gender. No support at home. School’s hostile. Friends drop them. And they ask their phone a question and the phone tells them no.

I think what bothers me most is that it’s just cowardice. Apple could have fixed it. They looked at Russia and decided the effort wasn’t worth it, that the market pressure to be locally palatable mattered more than not building homophobia into software. Regular corporate calculation. Except you’re the kid on the other end of it.

Can’t unknow this now. Can’t stop being mad about it either.