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China

Bing Censors Image Search for 'Tank Man' Even in US (vice.com) 180

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Bing, the search engine owned by Microsoft, is not displaying image results for a search for "Tank man," even when searching from the United States. The apparent censorship comes on the anniversary of China's violent crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. From a report: "There are no results for tank man," the Bing website reads after searching for the term. "Tank man" relates to the infamous image of a single protester standing in front of a line of Chinese tanks during the crackdown. China censors and blocks distribution of discussion of tank man and Tiananmen Square more generally. This year, anniversary events in Hong Kong have dwindled in size after authorities banned a vigil. Motherboard verified that the issue also impacts image searches on Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, which both use Bing.

UPDATE: "This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this," a Microsoft spokesperson told Gizmodo via email: As of early Friday evening, searching for "Tank Man" on Bing now returns many results — though the famous photograph only appears in passing in the form of a desktop wallpaper heavily modified to obscure the tanks.
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Bing Censors Image Search for 'Tank Man' Even in US More

Bing Censors Image Search for 'Tank Man' Even in US

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  • money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @03:43PM (#61455350)

    Chinese money is more important than ethics to Microsoft. Will there be a point when someone other than the little guy stands up against oppression?

    • Re:money (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cygnusvis ( 6168614 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @03:46PM (#61455362)
      Money in general is more important to corporations than ethics no matter where you are by their nature. Google on cares about ethics because in the USA caring about ethics is more profitable than not caring about ethics.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Then how do you explain Apple? Apple operates in China, cooperates with the Chinese government. Implements their censorship, gives them access to iCloud and iMessage.

        If ethics were more profitable then Apple would follow Google's example and withdraw.

        • Re:money (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @04:23PM (#61458050)

          If ethics were more profitable then Apple would follow Google's example and withdraw.

          I think you misunderstand the parent's comment. Ethics are important in the USA so in the USA it's profitable to be ethical to Americans. Kind of like how Apple in the USA markets itself as the "ethical" company who doesn't track you and respects your privacy. But not in China, ethics doesn't make money there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Money in general is more important to corporations than ethics no matter where you are by their nature. Google on cares about ethics because in the USA caring about ethics is more profitable than not caring about ethics.

        That doesn't compute as most US companies have lots of profit and few ethics. I think you mean the appearance of compliance with a code of ethics.

        Whilst Google is better than the average, lets not kid ourselves that they are perfect, Alphabet are pretty damn aggressive when it comes to advertising and I say that as a Android and Gmail fan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by invid ( 163714 )
      Isn't it ironic that the forces of capitalism are used to censor in favor of a communist party?

      • Re:money (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:57PM (#61455670)

        Isn't it ironic that the forces of capitalism are used to censor in favor of a communist party?

        "Capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them." -- Lenin

      • Re:money (Score:5, Informative)

        by onefriedrice ( 1171917 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @07:18PM (#61456042)

        Isn't it ironic that the forces of capitalism are used to censor in favor of a communist party?

        Not particularly. It's a pretty obvious outcome, which is why the U.S. policy to pursue normal business relations with China was and continues to be a terrible idea.

        Capitalism is what's known as a "dumb system" as opposed to socialism which is a "smart system". Here I don't mean "dumb" negatively, just that capitalism's mechanisms are simple and don't require much brain power. The idea is that individuals pursuing their own self interests will tend to benefit us all broadly. Versus socialism which does require brain power in the form of a central authority making decisions to guide or force us all to broad benefit.

        Because capitalism is so "dumb" (read: unthinking), it's somewhat easy to manipulate the game by smart players. Which is why regulations are usually put in place to prevent this. (Aside: Some stupid people think capitalism and regulations are opposed; we can ignore that silliness.)

        One of the smart policies we had in the past was to not treat China like an honest player in the game of capitalism. Because they're not honest. They're authoritarian. They lie to their own people and the world. They engage in genocide. Why should we want to do business with them? We should treat them like Iran or any other bad actor on the world stage and pile on sanctions.

        Instead, unwise and/or corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle had other ideas. With some exceptions like the last U.S. president and Bernie Sanders (in rare agreement), politicians generally favor treating China like an honest world actor. Here's our current president in 2011:

        "As a young member of [the] Foreign Relations Committee, I wrote and I said and I believed then what I believe now ... That a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large." -- Joe Biden in 2011

        Nope. The level of stupidity necessary to utter such a thing is embarrassingly high. A rising China might be a positive development for the Biden family fortune (as it turned out to be), but it quite obviously isn't a positive development for the U.S. or the world. And now the world is in the unenviable position of China de facto calling the shots because our governmental and corporate leaders are too stupid or too greedy to tell China to go screw themselves. Well, we had one leader who at least made noises about standing up to China, but he was too orange and too bad.

        • Interesting perspective, this "dumb"/"smart" theory of yours, and makes total sense; I haven't seen it anywhere before. One can also say that "dumb" means "natural", and "smart" means "designed" or "engineered".Interesting indeed!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Pierre Pants ( 6554598 )
      There once was a leader in the non-authoritarian world who stood up to China and called them out, but people didn't like his skin color and his tweets and so they sent him away.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Ironically Microsoft is actually quite helpful when it comes to bypassing the Great Firewall. TOR is blocked in China, but you can overcome the blocking by hiding it in an HTTPS connection to Microsoft's Azure cloud.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      When enough little guys get together. Really you shouldn't expect corporations to stand up for the little guy; you shouldn't even bother blaming them. That's not what they're for.

    • The hope that the technology revolution would result in the demise of authoritarian governments and dictatorships around the world seems to be fading, unfortunately. It appears many of those countries are using technology to increase their power and increase their control over the people who live there.

      • The hope that the technology revolution would result in the demise of authoritarian governments and dictatorships around the world seems to be fading

        There is a new hope: StarLink.

        Satellite internet enables people everywhere to bypass national censorship.

    • why would you expect the ruling class to stand up against oppression? That's like asking a shark to stand up against eating fish.

    • I trust everyone knows the MS response: "Ethics? We've heard of it."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BBF_BBF ( 812493 )

      And Apple immediately kowtowed to China at the snap of their finger.
      But strangely, Google was the only company to stand up to China, and as a result is locked out.

  • You can read the whole article.

    • Re:Just go to Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @03:59PM (#61455418) Homepage
      You could also read the story [jeffwidener.com] behind the photo by the AP photographer that actually took it. I first read this a few years back and - besides the tribulations of actually getting the shot - it puts a lot more context about events that I don't recall getting much coverage in Western media, such as that the photo was actually taken the day after the massacre in the square, and that at least some of the protesters were not entirely innocent either.
  • This whole issue appears to be over and done with already.

    • This whole issue appears to be over and done with already.

      The issue is not that Microsoft banned and then reinstated one image.

      The issue is that Microsoft has a general policy of kowtowing to authoritarians.

      • This whole issue appears to be over and done with already.

        The issue is not that Microsoft banned and then reinstated one image.

        The issue is that Microsoft has a general policy of kowtowing to authoritarians.

        Same as every company that does business in China.
        Play in their country, play by their rules.

        The only winning move is not to play.
        But then they miss out on that sweet sweet Chinese money.

  • Censorship or bad search engine? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @03:48PM (#61455378)

    Main Bing search brings up a lot of results for "tank man".

    Even in image search "tank man china" does bring up the image in question (though only one, from pinterest).

    If it were really banned, seems like it would affect main search results also... though it is suspicious as normally Bing's image search is pretty good. But we should see what Microsoft has to say about it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ebcdic ( 39948 )
      Not here. Image search says "There are no results for tank man Check your spelling or try different keywords."

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by aitikin ( 909209 )

        Not here. Image search says "There are no results for tank man Check your spelling or try different keywords."

        Confirmed here as well. Adding "China" does yield results, although the first 3 seemingly have nothing to do with the photo in question, and only the fourth shows said photo.

      • I had to searcn on Startpage to find Bing image search (which I never use), because Bing on mobile hides any links to anything but main search. ...

        Meanwhile, in the country they think I'm in, Tank Man does appear in the results. Must be blocked in the US and China. Same country, at this rate.

    • Might be something to censorship after all, since Bing claims human error [twitter.com] is involved as it works to undo this issue... just how does a human error of any kind affect such a specific result? But maybe it was just a bad actor internally.

    • Hilariously, all this publicity [wikipedia.org] has resulted in all the top hits, both image and otherwise, for "tank man" on Bing to turn up references to the censorship story.

  • Wasn't DDG supposed to be tracking free? If yes, why does bing allow them to use their services?

    • Wasn't DDG supposed to be tracking free? If yes, why does bing allow them to use their services?

      DDG sells ad slots in their search results. Some of that money is then used to purchase access to Bing. From there, DDG proxies searches so that Bing can't tell which searches are coming from which users, thus preventing Bing from being able to track users or draw any sort of correlations between searches. So yes, DDG is free of tracking, while at the same time using Bing for its results.

  • One less reason to use Bing.
    But the funny thing is that their attempt to censor is pretty poor. "tank men tiananmen" works just fine.
    https://www.bing.com/images/se... [bing.com] man tiananmen

  • My septic tank over-flowed because I couldn't find him. Thanks, Bing. You'll be hearing from my lawyer shortly.

  • I don't know if they did have censored results earlier, but right now it seems perfectly fine. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tank... [duckduckgo.com]
    • "tank man" without quotes returns nothing on duck duck go or bing image search. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tank... [duckduckgo.com] Normal web search links to the wikipedia page and similar expected things. Tank man china, tank man 1984, ect all return the picture. heck "tank man" plus random garbage will return some result, and often the image is viable in the first page. (tried "tank man 1", "tank man asdf", "tank man censor". The exact phrase tank man is still being blocked, at least in my browser.

    • Your link is a search for "tank man china", not "tank man". A search for "tank man" produces no results [duckduckgo.com], other than a message that says:

      Sorry, no results here.

      There seem to be a number of ways to bypass the censor by simply adding a relevant word (e.g. Tiananmen, China, etc.), but it's also clear that the phrase "tank man" by itself as been blocked through some sort of deliberate action on the part of someone at Microsoft.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Searching specifically for "tank man" does come up blank. As you said, searching for "Tiananmen man" finds the image, as does searching for "tank tank man", "china tank man", and even "tank man china". They really aren't trying hard at all.

    • Re:I don't think it's censored. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Angry Coward ( 6165972 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:36PM (#61455608)
      The censoring is very specific and ineffectually done, but I can't imagine anything else that will cause no result for the specific string "tank man" other than deliberate censorship. I guess some kind of obscure bug is remotely possible but that's even less plausible than ineffectual censorship. I've never gotten no results at all on a search for a simple two word phrase. I didn't even know that was possible, and I suspect it isn't for any other two words chosen randomly from a standard English dictionary, unless they are also being deliberately blocked. "tanc man" produces lots of pictures of tanks, including the tienanmen image fairly far down the first page.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fabioalcor ( 1663783 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:33PM (#61455588)

    Why "infamous"? That guy is a badass man doing his ultimate act of badassery. He deserves the utmost respect from the whole free world.

    • The image is only "infamous" to the totalitarian regime of China and weird "journalists".
    • He would not have dared to do it in a London street. The traffic would have run him right over. But he would have been run over democratically, so that's OK.
      • To counter your example of 'funny' communist prop, I'll point out that many people jay-walk in London daily without being run over.

  • Disgusting how controlled our big companies are (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:42PM (#61455622)

    They're scared to stand up for any principles except those which are screamed by mobs on social media

    We saw the same thing with the NBA

    Are we doomed to become China in order to appease their leaders and access the massive market they present? I don't think so but we probably will drift that way if media is this manipulated and discussion is so controlled.

    It reminds me of Vice changing headlines from over a year ago to appear less like propaganda now that the COVID lab origin theory is more plausible (at the time, even a Chinese virologist suggested that this was a likely origin and the CCP would try to suppress it). Rather than trying to be less biased, they're trying to get removed from the WaybackMachine and similar services.

    Here are more details (stupid title and partisan but not false): https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Is this "fixed" for everyone? I just tried it doesn't appeared to be censored right now. I'm in the US.

  • DuckDuckGo uncensored (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:59PM (#61455680)
    Searching tank man on DuckDuckGo yields many results for me, starting with the Wikipedia page.

  • The obligatory Simpsons reference. [simpsonswiki.com]

    Second, welcome to the global marketplace. The United States has spent seventy years spreading its democratic idealism via capitalism. Now China is doing the same via its Socialist Market Economy. Except 'Murica, so hell if we let China take over, 'm'ah right?

  • Bing Censors Image Search for 'Tank Man' Even in US

    Image searches on Bing for "Tank Girl" still okay.

  • I call bullshit.

    I searched for "tank man" on Bing and got a ton of results, including the famous image of him in front of a tank.

  • I had no problem finding image thru Duck (Score:3)

    by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @05:52PM (#61455822)
    I also downloaded it. Never know.

  • The wumao are everywhere (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sakuta ( 7459770 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @06:19PM (#61455908)

    Please remember that the CCP and their wumao are not China.

    The CPP are the people that have imprisoned the Chinese people at the point of a gun or run them over with tanks as they did in Tiananmen.

    -One day China will be free.

  • There's too much money at stake.

  • Both of them?

  • by an agent or agents of the CCP

  • Since nobody knows the true identity of Tank Man, a semi-fictional portrayal could show the events leading up to the tank standoff, and then when the massacre starts, Tank Man is pursued by gov't goons in a hectic chase to reach Hong Kong, a British Commonwealth back then. The chase could involve bicycles, motorbikes, foot chases, and stowawaying in trucks, trains, etc. It could have an Apocalypto feel (directed by Mel Gibson).

  • Democracy in America is almost over (Score:3)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @08:49AM (#61456962) Homepage Journal
    When the almighty corporations our government grovels to themselves grovel before a foreign government, itâ(TM)s that foreign government that will rule our nation. This might seem like a âoeno big dealâ thing today, but make no mistake â" the corporate bowing to demands will soon turn into âoeUS Citizen extradited to China for saying something that offended the Peopleâ(TM)s Partyâ and our laws being written to meet the demands of the world economic leader no later than the mid-2030s

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