Slashdot Mirror
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."
Fuck governments who censor the internet. That's all.
I'm still trying to work out if Google is not being American evil, not being Chinese evil, being completely evil, or not being evil at all in all of this.
John
Hw are they hiding it? They're blatantly pointing out that users shouldn't use terms least they be disconnected or run into censorship, even for common things that they might not have thought of before. Now youll probably get a warning for something when you weren't even remotely looking for something subversive.
I could of sworn I remember seeing an article that google was no longer censoring in china, did they go back on that while I wasn't looking?
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
Google is not hiding, nor aiding China's censorship. In a way... Google is actually "highlighting" China's censorship. Google is a company that wants to keep its customers. It's customers think that Google is to blame for what they can't find (at least from what I understand about the article) and so Google is trying to make it clear that certain things they look for will not work, since their Government doesn't trust them. To those who grasp this concept, every time a word they type in the query box gets highlighted its like Google saying "sorry, your Government doesn't want you to know about that". Whether Google has any other motive than just making it clear that they are not to blame for failed searches or not, the result in the minds of the observant is still worth noting.
~theCzar
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.
How is drawing specific attention to the things that invoke Chinese government censorship supposed to be hiding the censorship?
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
Oh God! A company having the audacity to tell you about things you might want to buy?! Truly, they are the most evil people to have ever walked the face of this good Earth.
Google helpfully telling the Chinese people, "Hey, this search term won't work, maybe you should try another *wink wink*". That should make it easier to to bypass China's filters.
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.
It's not Google doing the censoring. Apparently China interferes somehow with connections that are caught searching for various terms. Google now highlights certain words and pops up a notice that it has observed these words may break your connection.
From TFS:
My reading of that is that Google is being censored, not that Google is censoring as otherwise not a word in it makes sense.
If Google were censoring, then the search engine would work normally, it's just certain search results would not appear. So a search for "Tienanmen Square Massacre" would come up with pages of results of, say, Fred Tienanmen's blog entry where he massacres those proposing that squares have the same sized sides, but would be absent anything about some funny business that occurred in China during the 1980s.
That's not what's happening though. What TFS is saying is that users are suffering random page errors, that the engine feels "inconsistent and unreliable". That's consistent with a third party, say, perhaps, the Great Firewall of China, interrupting page downloads as they happen because they have naughty words on them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
leave people the hell alone to conduct their lives in peace already!
Sorry, but you were filtered... nobody could read you there.
Automatically redirect to the https version of Google. Problem solved.
I would think that giving people interactive hints that can be used to work around censorship is generally 'not evil'. More evil than taking a stand and ignoring the Chinese government until they're completely blocked and replaced wholesale with a Chinese government controlled search engine? Perhaps, perhaps not.
>>>google is simply a company. companies are never there for your benefit. never.
I agree with the first sentence, because companies should not be worshipped like football teams. They are inaminate entities and nothing more. But disagree with the second. Companies ARE there to serve the customer and keep him/her happy, because it they don't they end-up like Montgomery Wards or Circuit Shitty (bankrupt).
I visited Wards during its final selloff. The employees there looked extremely depressed, and it was kinda sad, but that's how a free market works. You either win the "votes" of the customers' dollars, or you don't and get removed. The market is a democracy where the Demos (the People) decide who wins and loses. (Except when government interfere with bailouts/stimulus/corporate welfare.) So far Google has been winning the votes, while other ad agencies like Youtube struggle to survive.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
You forgot to toss in a couple "U R TEH PRODUCT NOT TEH CUSTMERZ!!!1!!1!LAWL"s in there just for good measure and increased fearmogering.
I actually find it fairly subversive of Google to post the terms that the Chinese government has ordered banned. "Hey guys, here's what the government DON'T want you to know about. Have fun!".
I don't think you have followed this issue. Google initially followed some of China's requests but then stopped, closed up shop in China and redirected requests to its HK site that is not censored.. Now the Chinese government is using it's firewall to block (censor) google searches to that site. Google is not censoring at all. And the government of China is making google look unreliable to it's customers who are seeing disconnects.
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.
Highlighting the "offending" words is what I'd call the opposite of hiden censorship.
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.
So far Google has been winning the votes, while other ad agencies like Youtube struggle to survive.
Head asplode.
Yes they are. I invest in companies, companies pay my salary, pay taxes, invest in research that improves lives. My retirement fund is filled with companies working on maximizing profit and I don't mind any of that, because it will make my retirement better.
Companies make things and provide services that I pay money for, because if I were to make those things or do those services, they are more expensive and not done as well.
WHAT I don't like is when companies cross from amoral (no morals, good or evil) into the realm of immoral. However since what is or what isn't immoral is relative and subjective, I have to choose the companies I do business with, with care. The problem is, too many people don't care enough to be bothered.
Example: Walmart used to be a decent company. Now, it is nothing more than a machine that forces crappier and crappier products and services upon the unsuspecting and uncaring people. I agree with SNAPPER, and instead of buying a cheap lawnmower from Walmart, I now specifically will buy Snapper, because they are uncompromising. A rare feat in today's business.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
Walmart used to be a decent company. Now, it is nothing more than a machine that forces crappier and crappier products and services upon the unsuspecting and uncaring people.
Dude, I'm pretty sure that's specifically Walmart's business model - cheap for cheap.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Gmail uses ssl, search may or may not.
Don't see why your Gmail would break.
But this is another reason all the USA haters out there should really consider whether they want the Internet run by the UN as China is now proposing.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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?
People only see the prices for goods and services, and rarely think about the real costs.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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
No, Google is a magazine publishing a new edition every time you hit Search. The are paid by the ad agencies every time they place one in front of you, then more if you click on it, etc., whereas Time only gets paid for the column-inch of ads.
Seriously, telling users (who aren't customers, after all) what terms to avoid is about as far as Google can go, until they acquire their own nuclear arsenal and demonstrate a willingness to use it. The PRC is doing the censorship, not Google.
As opposed to the US currently taking down any .com, .net or .org site they damn well please because you hurt some corporation's feelings? As someone that lives in Canada, I don't think the UN could do a whole lot worse.