Microsoft's Bing Reportedly Censoring Politically Sensitive Chinese Names, Researchers Say (seekingalpha.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seeking Alpha: Microsoft shares remained near their breakeven point in late trading, Thursday, amid a report that the company has started censoring Bing searches in the U.S. for certain Chinese names considered to be politically sensitive. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cybersecurity research organization Citizen Lab found that Microsoft's Bing search engine had been adjusted to not automatically fill in suggestions for the names of some prominent Chinese dissidents, and national political leaders.
The autofill feature is common on Bing and other search engines and makes suggestions for terms after a few letters have been typed into a search query field. Citizens Lab said it first noticed the issue last fall when names such as that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo failed to automatically fill in in either English or Chinese in Bing searches. The Journal reported that Microsoft had corrected the issue, which it attributed to a "technical error."
The autofill feature is common on Bing and other search engines and makes suggestions for terms after a few letters have been typed into a search query field. Citizens Lab said it first noticed the issue last fall when names such as that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo failed to automatically fill in in either English or Chinese in Bing searches. The Journal reported that Microsoft had corrected the issue, which it attributed to a "technical error."
Winnie. (Score:5, Funny)
I never appreciated how "political" Winnie the Pooh was when I was a child.
Re: (Score:1)
Pooh (the Disney character) isn't too bright, but he's not in any way malicious. It's kind of weird that even when insulting their leaders, the Chinese still pull their punches. Contrast that with the USA, where.. yeah, we've all seen it, I'll skip the examples.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe it's because he name sounds like it. There was another guy whose name sounded like "little bottle", which got people into trouble, too.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair I think this is one of those false rumours that has taken hold. Winnie the Pooh stuff is widely available in China, e.g. on Taobao and at the Disney Store in Disneyland Shanghai.
Might even be deliberate, to distract from them far more serious censorship that is going on.
Re: I didn't know (Score:3)
I think the technical issue was that it appeared in the US instead of just Hong Kong, Russia, and Taiwan.
Re: (Score:2)
What if it's not censorship? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
30 years ago China invited investment from the West, subject to their local laws.
Greedy western capitalists couldn't wait to exploit a massive new source of cheap labour and a potential new consumer market.
Given that China has always been a fairly brutal authoritarian sort of place, they knew what they were signing up for and they did it anyway.
Re:What if it's not censorship? (Score:4, Informative)
Given that China has always been a fairly brutal authoritarian sort of place
The assumption was that once China turned to capitalism, it would also turn toward liberal democracy.
There was progress in that direction under Jiang and Hu, but it was all rolled back by Xi.
Re: (Score:2)
The assumption was that once China turned to capitalism, it would also turn toward liberal democracy.
I remember that being used as an argument when China's human rights record was raised, but I didn't think anyone really believed it.
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Sure, it's the companies being controlled by the government of China, but what makes you say it's not censorship? Are you suggesting that anything done for or by the government can't be censorship?
It sucks that this is what you get when a government controls the media, including the search engines.
Re: (Score:2)
That is not capitalism. Capitalism is a corollary of freedom, and government cannot stop people from getting together and investing to create enterprises. It arises naturally when restrictions are placed on people picking up clubs and deciding to take a cut of their neighbor's work.
What you describe is people trying to survive with evil overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
I had to reread the title. (Score:1)
I thought they meant MSN.
The only point of bing (Score:2)
Is looking for things that Google is either intentionally censoring or down ranking into obscurity. If Bing starts doing the same they will probably loose a good chunk of their rounding error territory market share
Auto complete is no big deal.. hopefully it doesn't spread to search results.
Wow! Just “wow!”. (Score:1)
\begin{Sardonic Tongue-in-Cheek Rant} ;-)
I never thought I'd see Microsloth on the side of Maoist-style “Cultural Revolution” / Tiananmen Square-esque suppression of basic human rights advocates.
Hong Kong & Taiwan are surely now lost if other big tech behemoths play along with this insidious policy.
The Berlin Wall might have never fallen. The Muslim Spring might have never taken hold. The French might never have heard about, let alone financed & militarily supported, that pesky
Don't tell disney (Score:1)
Don't tell disney that Bing censored some bear name.
Seth Rich (Score:2)
Who needs Project Dragonfly? (Score:2)
The criminal's creed of "If I wasn't doing [illicit profitable activity], someone else would" is a crappy excuse of a moral argument, but correct about the nature of doing unsavory business that is still profitable when accounting for boycotts and/or fines. If capitalist economies don't want to be the manufacturers of the means of authoritarian oppression, they need to attach sufficiently deterrent punishments to the activity.
lol what (Score:3)
So we're to the point where we'll pretend modifying auto-fill is "censorship?"
Jesus, Slashdot's understanding of this very simple word just keeps getting shallower
Re: (Score:1)
Where can I find a web search engine (Score:2)
An actual search engine, not the "steer people to ads and popular political narrative devices" that are incorrectly named search engines. Hopefully one that isn't only on the "dark web".