Bing Censoring All Simplified Chinese Language Queries

boggis writes "Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times journalist, is calling for a boycott of Microsoft's Bing. They have censored search requests at the request of the Chinese Government (like certain others). The difference is that Bing has censored all searches done anywhere in simplified Chinese characters (the characters used in mainland China). This means that a Chinese speaker searching for Tiananmen anywhere in the world now gets the impression that it is just a lovely place to visit."

Comments

Chinese

[TopSpin]

Bing censors at the "request" of the Chinese government. Google censors at the "request" of the Chinese government. Yahoo censors at the "request" of the Chinese government. As a result of whatever you care to attribute the subservience of the Chinese people, 21% of our species is subject to the filtering policies of the Chinese government. Ultimately the Chinese must be the the reason this tyranny comes to an end. Or not.

The marketing companies of the West aren't interested in fighting their battles. Stop expecting ad pimps to be responsible for liberating anyone. Instead, raise your expectations of the Chinese.

Re:Chinese

[elnyka]

The marketing companies of the West aren't interested in fighting their battles. Stop expecting ad pimps to be responsible for liberating anyone. Instead, raise your expectations of the Chinese.

Stop expecting the Chinese to be responsible for liberating anyone. Instead, despair.

Not us anyone, but themselves. There is no reason to despair for 1.34B that prove ultimately incapable of liberating themselves. Most of their wounds since the late 1800's are culturally self induced.

It'd be nice to see them finally get the fuck up as a modern, democratic (or at least humane in the modern sense) nation, but there is a point that you just go "agh, WTF" and just sit back and watch the train wreck, waiting to see if it implodes into a self-sucking black hole, hoping it doesn't fuck up nearby nations in the process.

I find it deplorable that search engines, corps and entire governments bend over to China's economic might and implement/look over things that are unjustifiable by any modern notion of morality. But social reform is not their job or duty - that's the people's. The onus is eventually on them.

One could argue that knowledge is power, and that by removing search access to them you deprive them of the ability to fight for freedom. But the Chinese as a whole aren't some tiny tinie minority fighting for survival with bows and arrows. They have always proved themselves resourceful, and at some point they need to take responsibility for their own destiny.

Their freedom is not dependent on western search engines or corporations choosing to fight a moral fight that is not their own and for which they are not capable of even dreaming to win. Freedom, freedom in the modern sense of the world as people in the developed world knows, that depends on them, the Chinese people.

Re:Anyone surprised?

[h4rm0ny]

Note: I also think that the MS Bing commercials are about the dumbest I've seen

Smart people will choose products based on their needs and their research on the matter. Commercials are for the people who associate brands with lifestyles (i.e. silly people). Don't be surprised if you find their commercials dumb, be uh, depressed that there exists a target audience for those commercials. Hmmmm. I need to re-think this. :(

Re:Anyone surprised?

[commodore64_love]

The type of people who say I should get "real" jeans called Levis, instead of the same quality but lower priced Arizonas or Wranglers. I used to fall for that nonsense, listening to the advice of the crowd ("Levis are cool; others are not") but not anymore.

Re:contrast

[mikechant]

Google also censor results in China. Search for Tiannamen Square or Falun Gong on google.cn and you find just the same whitewashed results as with Bing. The difference is merely one of implementation.

I don't agree. I think there is a clear moral difference. Google seem to be doing the minimum they need to do to comply with Chinese law - restricting what is seen via the (effectively Chinese govt. owned) .cn domain in China. MS are apparently censoring everything that is seen by anyone using simplified Chinese anywhere in the world. Yes, they could use another language - if they even release that some search results are 'going missing'. So MS get the 'evil' award in this case because they are in practice censoring far beyond what even Chinese law requires.

Re:contrast

[h4rm0ny]

Logically, accepting "someone else may do it if I don't" as a justification for your own immoral behavior guarantees a state of immoral behaviour existing. The only possibility of achieving a state without the immoral behavior is to not engage in it oneself. Yes, you are exchanging a certainty of their being immorality for a possibility that there might not be, but some of us consider that progress. And you might be surprised what an example can achieve sometimes.

My take on things.