Bing Censoring All Simplified Chinese Language Queries 214
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."
Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
Bing censors at the "request" of the Chinese government. Google [slashdot.org] censors at the "request" of the Chinese government. Yahoo [slashdot.org] 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:Anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
Think about this. Most web sites that are in simplified Chinese are probably in... Wait for it... China!
So I'm guessing that since discussion of topics contrary to the state agenda will get you thrown in jail, that most sites written in simplified Chinese about things such as Tienanmen Square really are about how it's a nice place to visit. If that's the case, then it's entirely believable to me that top search results in simplified Chinese for topics like that would return state-sanctioned sites.
It's not insulting to my intelligence to think that there's probably nothing to see here, except a reporter who is probably justifiably skeptical of Microsoft's claims, but in this particular case, is probably being a bit overzealous in his accusations.
I wonder, if the reporter tried an Arabic language search for something like "American aggression" and most results returned (surprise!) web sites expressing anti-American sentiment, that must mean that Microsoft is also appeasing terrorists, right? EVIL!!!
Re:contrast (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Google has done it by censoring the results in their country-specific site. Bing have done it by censoring results when you search using a language form popular in mainland China.
>>>
The Microsoft solution strikes me as the quick-and-dirty solution, while the Google method shows more advanced programming.
And for those that say, "Google shouldn't censor results," then you are naive. If Google did not censor, then Chinese government would block them completely and MS would quickly obtain a virtual monopoly over 1.3-billion-person market. I don't think any of us want to see that happen (again). Google is smart to take whatever market they can get in China, and as they gain influence, pressure the Chinese government (the way they pressure the US and EU) to do things the google way (open).
Re:Anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
For Freedom Day (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been on the fence about listening to China, but no more. I conclude that the American idea of freedom, the American revolution, is an ongoing experiment and must apply everywhere in the world. We Americans by nature are assholes, so we may as well do something productive with it. We are obligated to participate, to be subversive to tyranny or even tendencies towards it, everywhere we go and we must be that way at home.
American companies operate because they are granted license to by the people of the united states as a whole.
At home, nor abroad, can we tolerate any government that violates any fundamental liberty. Even if we cannot agree on what fundamental liberties all, we must be dedicated to the idea that the more liberties that we uphold, the more we have. We forget that freedom is so sacred as of late, and we listen too much to those who would say that we have freedom too much.
I say that we say that for right now today is Freedom Day. Take a second to glance at the Constitution and understand that the government is allowed to do only what is on that little piece of paper and you are allowed to do everything else. Write whatever you want, go to a gun store, read something subversive, stop by a church, hang with some protestors, revel in the fact that you are free and can do things. Even as we bum out about how the west has gotten the short of the stick in manufacturing, we should be extremely cognizant that we can do so many things our counterparts in China and other parts Asia cannot, I can take my made in Chinese flag and I can burn it.
Today is Freedom Day, and so is every day. Remind yourself that you are free.
And join the Amish? (Score:3, Insightful)
boycott Chinese products
The United States has outsourced so much of its manufacturing to Chinese firms that in 2009, the Amish are almost the only group who can pull off a boycott of products made in China.
Re:Some quasi-scientific experiments (Score:3, Insightful)
The gist is that google, ms and yahoo can't do a damn thing about it. Their choice is either to abide chinese law or not operate in the market. Idealism not withstanding, china is the fastest growing market and if the day should come when search is NOT censored by the government, they will need an established presence in the market or they'll merely be also-rans.
In the meantime we all get treated to the spectacle of exactly how newspeak will be implemented. The only question remaining is whether the future worldwide will be dominated by open or censored search results. Frankly, it doesn't look good.
Re:contrast (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is dangerous. MS are setting a precedent - a search engine censoring results globally for one language, regardless of the local laws of the country being served.
The Chinese government must love this: you can no longer get around the censorship by simply using a proxy in another country. Sure, you could search in English, but most Chinese people don't have a good enough grasp of it.
Re:Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, you're posting all over the place with this stuff. What evidence do you have that Bing is censoring results? Google admits that they censor results. Microsoft say that they do not. So back up what you're saying with something, please. TFA hasn't held up. It makes sense that if the vast majority of online presence in a particular language is in mainland China where online censorship is the rule, that the results of searches for, e.g. Tianamen Square, come up with Tourist Information rather than articles about the protests. But even so, it's not the case that this universally happens. Compare the two image searches posted lower down in this thread, done in Google and Bing. The Google one omits pictures of protests and "tank man". Bing actually has them.
So kindly back up your statements with some evidence, because I'm not seeing it. I'd like some searches in simplified Chinese to back this up, please.
Re:contrast (Score:3, Insightful)
And for those that say, "Google shouldn't censor results," then you are naive.
Some people say Google shouldn't censor results because it is immoral to do so. If it is immoral to censor results, the fact that MS will gain dominance in China is irrelevant. So is the fact that failure to censor will hurt Google's bottom line. Most moral realists believe that moral norms trump other norms, so if it is immoral for Google to censor, then they shouldn't censor.
Note: I'm not necessarily in that camp. I'm not sure whether censoring results in China is morally prohibited or not. I'm just trying to explain why your claim that others are naive is insulting and false. Maybe you think that it's naive to believe that one should do what moral duty requires, but a less sensitive soul may reply that this opinion is just evidence of your own stunted intellectual development.
Re:Anyone surprised? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:contrast (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Chinese Censorship != Attempt to Rewrite Histor (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but no. I have a lot of respect for CHINESE PPL, but for China, the gov.? Nope. Their approach is no different then it was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 years ago. Basically, it is a totalitarian state that is AFRAID of its ppl. Otherwise, they would have finished tianiman. Worse, they are the ones doing major destruction around the world in terms of pollution, economy, etc. I hold them (and W) mostly responsible for the current economic situation. CHina was given a gift by Clinton in giving them MFN as well as into WTO. And they have reneged on their part (free their money and drop their trade barriers). Instead, they have actually increased trade barriers, manipulate their money to make cheap cheap cheap exports relative to all other western money, use no pollution control to keep the cheapest prices and are subsidizing various industries. Nearly everything that the Chinese gov. is doing is regarded as unethical as well as illegal in almost the entire world. If another nation (developed or not) were doing the same to China, they would be upset. I do not hold the chinese ppl responsible for this (unlike I hold Americans responsible for voting in W a second time).
Finally, Chinese gov. IS attempting to rewrite 64. It is not simply that they are keeping it quiet, but they have recently taken to speaking about it as these ppl were terrorists. That is re-writing. It would similar if American gov. stated that Kent State murder was because students had physically taken over a number of buildings, holding hostages, and was killing soldiers.
Re:The NYT reporter misses the forest for the tree (Score:3, Insightful)
I see your point. But think about this: if Google or Bing were filtering English language results at the request of the American government, would you be happy to swap over to Mandarin?
Re:contrast (Score:3, Insightful)
If Congress passes a law requiring google to censor the internet, then google would do it. I would not expect anything less. They would probably put a lot of money into trying to have the law repealed, but they would follow it while it was legitimate.
Are you saying that if Congress passed a law requiring censorship (which is not a very far-fetched idea. Maybe not to the extent that China does, but I would not be surprised if there were some sort of law passed in the next 20 years that required something to be censored) then google should refuse to provide Americans with a search engine? It is not Google's job to control the american congress. That is the job of the people. Just as it is not Google's job to try to change china. If the people really had a problem with this censorship (and no censorship is perfect, if people in china want to find something they probably can), then they should force their government to change.
Do you buy chinese goods? Every dollar you send to china promotes their government by allowing their economy to grow. If you had a big problem with them then you would refuse to buy chinese goods. But, you are not going to do that because things from china are cheap (who is selling out?). It is very easy to get up on your high horse and say google should ignore a market of billions of people and call them a sellout. It is much harder when it is your money, not someone else's that is at risk.