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Google Highlights Censored Search Terms In China
itwbennett writes "Responding to complaints from Chinese Googlers that the search engine is 'inconsistent and unreliable,' Google has updated its service to help users steer clear of search queries that will result in page errors. Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection. 'By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post."
My friend and I couldnt figure out why communications would break down over gmail/google talk. I wonder if this is why...certain terms breaking our connection.
Hidden censorship is worse than obvious censorship. Shame on Google for hiding China's shame.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Hidden censorship is worse than obvious censorship. Shame on Google for hiding China's shame.
I don't understand this logic at all. From the summary:
Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection.
Uh so it looks like Google is calling attention to China's censorship and giving users a nod ahead of time that their search is going to be censored. This is far from "hiding" anything and, conversely, lets the user know about the censorship. The other good thing this does is that if I'm interested in censored terms and my IP hits the great firewall with these censored terms, the government might build a dossier on my entire histories to see what else I'm interested in and have dirt on me if they need it. But if Google is warning me ahead of time, this never hits the firewall and China doesn't get to profile their citizens based on search queries. Google will enable you, if you so choose, to appear to keep your nose clean.
My work here is dung.
During prohibition in the US, stills could be owned and sold, just not used to produce alcoholic beverages. There were still legitimate purposes for stills, e.g. malt extract for baking.
The manufactures helped out, by giving very explicit instructions on exactly what NOT TO DO, because if you followed all the steps, you'd end up with whiskey. And you wouldn't want to do that.
If You read TFA then You will see that this service actually HIGHLIGHTS the censorship process.
IMHO that's doing the right thing.
TCAP-Abort
Until the Chinese public rejects the idea that their exploitation is for the "common good" they'll continue to be a 2nd rate country.
The moment the Chinese realize that they deserve the basic rights granted in western countries they'll become unstoppable. I don't care if they've got a thousands year old culture. It's wrong. Right now they simply don't value their own rights an freedoms and they'll remain oppressed if they don't want to help themselves.
Of course, this also means violent bloody revolution, as the current ruling elite likes their privileged status and won't give it up without a fight. This is why you see the regime desperate to control information, as every taste of westernization brings prosperity lightyears beyond the old ways. They know when the revolution comes, their heads will be on the block.
I'd like to see this feature rolled out in every country. There are very few countries that aren't busy censoring something; Whether it's the copywrongers or some anti-terror legislation, or the latest "Save the children" law, Google receives piles of censorship demands weekly from every government. We can't just say "Shame on China!" when everyone else is doing variations on the same theme.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm confused by this post - I thought they pulled out of china. Why wouldn't they respond to chinese googlers by saying "use baidu"?
What week is the river cleanup?
"It looks like you're trying to do one of the following:
I suggest omitting the following words from your search: RIVER, WEEK, CLEANUP. Try 'What is the?' and you are sure to get better results from your query."
I applaud Google for this. But unfortunately Google might actually get banned for this. After all, they have Baidu to pick up the slack anyways (and they WILL roll over unlike Google). Google will be viewed as "inharmonious" to Chinese society. A harmonious society is an old Confucius concept that's been the new mantra of the PRC as of late. Which is ironic being that the Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge both Confucius and capitalistic ideology. But I digress.
Life is not for the lazy.
Has anyone got any good articles, documentaries, or personal experiences about what ordinary Internet use is like in the PRC? Does filtering or censorship show up as a brick wall "COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY CONTENT FORBIDDEN", or a passive "sorry, no such content found"? How often does it affect ordinary daily browsing? If ordinary browsers are aware of it, do they generally develop a seething resentment of it, or a shrug-and-live-with-it accpetance (or resignation) like some western employees whose workplaces filter access? I'd be interested to read something objective about what the filter actually is, what it does, and how the Chinese generally feel about it.
A virus that infects thousands or computers could send out these key search words and take down an entire network.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Automatically redirect to the https version of Google. Problem solved.
link to test out yourself: https://www.google.com.hk/?esrch=SearchNotices::OptIn&q=%E9%95%BF%E6%B1%9F&hl=en
Screenshot of Google banning the term Freedom of Speech: http://image.dude-suit.net/albums/userpics/10002/googlecensor.png
and it's google blocking it, since I'm in the states unlike their blog where they make it sound like it's china blocking before the search gets to them, which is untrue.
By google providing users with information about what is blocked they are enabled to more rapidly formulate queries which bypass censorship. The change is a win for all but oppressive control.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
The search can still be performed, but it is China — NOT Google — that is doing the censoring by interfering with queries which contain offending terms.
Before, if someone in mainland China performed a search containing an offending term, equipment that is part of the so-called "Great Firewall" would interfere with the search, making it appear that the search results page was unavailable or resetting the browser's connection, and then making Google unavailable to the user for a period.
Now, Google is warning you that will happen based on observations of which search terms resulted in China's filters blocking the search results.
Why are there so many ignorant comments on this post claiming that it's "Google" the one doing the blocking? They're not.
you are blaming google for what china is doing, and you are not giving google any credit for being subtle, perhaps because you are a person who doesn't understand anything subtle
china is going to censor the web. with google or without google
now anyone with an iq over 50 can tell why their connection is breaking: it's not google, it's china being a censor
they didn't carefully avoid anything, they didn't say "china is censoring us" because then china would cut off google
do you understand now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can still do the search by hitting "Search Anyway". Anywhere other than mainland China, this search will work. Just try it. If you're in mainland China and you elect to search anyway, that will result in your connection being reset and will temporarily break your ability to interact with Google. It is China, not Google, that is doing this.
Really want to help your China users? Make Google HTTPS-only in China and force DNS resolution of non-Chinese Google servers so their government has no idea what they're searching for.
A lot of people are having trouble with this article because Google is having to do very Political things in this case.
Google engineers know for damn sure why the connections are being reset. But if they say that explicitly, the Chinese government will rambunctiously cuddle them. Google has already had troubles in the past with the Chinese government. So, what google has done here is said, "Oh no, there's something out of our control. If you do this search then your connection will be reset."
Note the usage of the passive voice there. Google is saying and pretending to believe one thing, while doing another. It's necessary, but unfortunate.
As an example:
Go to http://www.google.com.hk/
and put in
tiananmen square massacre
It'll show those three words in red everywhere on the page.
Do you have ESP?
By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post.
ZOMG the list of censored terms has to be bigger than War and Peace. Here's an idea, throw all of those terms at the great firewall and buffer overflow results (or something like that). Then the Chinese people can see what the nanny state has been hideing from them. Information IS power.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Google should tell China to go fuck itself. The owners and employees should be ashamed. They should realize that the free and open sharing of information, something they have enabled for years, was itself enabled by societies that value freedom of both the written and spoken word. Now they are just another evil coward corporation that can't stomach the thought of reduced profits even if it means kissing the ass of one of the most free speech repressing countries in the world.
If I were in china, i'd get a 404 page not found error
A "403 Forbidden" error would be more informative and more appropriate.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
that the damage interprets Google as Censorship and routes China around internet.
Wait... that's not quite right...
However, to be truly faithful to the antithesis of "inconsistent and unreliable", Google must back and finance the struggles of anti-censorship luminaries as Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.
Google you need to step up and put your money where your mouth is; or are you just cherry picking popular left wing causes to champion like every other spineless organizations?
Google claims that these limits are "outside of our control", this is not exactly true. The truth is that Google just doesn't have the balls to do the right thing.
What Google should do is perform the search anyway, and when the Chinese government raises a fuss you tell them to fuck off.
It's time to stop accepting bullshit like this. The way you win rights is by simply doing the thing you know to be right and then fighting the entities that try to stop you.
However it has never been the case (as far as I know) that a corporation (especially one with stockholders) has effected this kind of positive change.