Nervals Lobster writes Microsoft has censored Chinese-language results for Bing users in the United States as well as mainland China, according to an article in The Guardian. But this isnt the first time that Bings run into significant controversy over the sanitizing of Chinese-language search results outside of mainland China. In November 2009, Microsoft came under fire from free-speech advocates after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof accused the company of craven kowtowing to the mainland Chinese government by sanitizing its Chinese-language search results for users around the world. Just as with The Guardian and other news outlets this week, Microsoft insisted at the time that a bug was to blame for the sanitized search results. The bug identified in the web image search was indeed fixed, a Microsoft spokesperson told me in December 2009, after I presented them with a series of screenshots suggesting that the pro-Chinese-government filter remained in effect even after Kristofs column. Please also note that Microsoft recognize[s] that we can continue to improve our relevancy and comprehensiveness in these web results and we will. Time will tell whether anythings different this time around. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 04:07:01 +0000
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