We picked up a story this morning saying that Apple was censoring the word “jailbreak” in the iTunes Store. While the news just started making the rounds this morning, Apple has actually been censoring “jailbreak” with asterisks for many months. We noticed the activity first when a recent episode of the CultCast called “The Jailbreak Breakdown” showed up as “The J*******k Breakdown.”
It looks like Apple pays attention to the blogosphere, because the word “jailbreak” is already starting to be uncensored in the iTunes Store.
iPhone hacker MuscleNerd noticed the change in iTunes policy a few minutes ago, and we’re also seeing the word show up in more search results, although it appears that certain instances of the “j” word remain censored (our podcast included).
Update: The Next Web notes that the censoring issue seems to be related to how Apple handles iTunes Store ratings in the United States. Switching the ratings system to a different country in iTunes uncensors the word “jailbreak” entirely. Interesting.
Via: @MuscleNerd
