A latest research by Chinese Web monitoring service GreatFire.org expresses concerns that Microsoft’s search engine Bing filters results for Chinese-language searches for users not only in China, but also worldwide.
Tests by Greatfire.org and Dominic Rushe at the Guardian claim that when users from the US search for controversial topics in Chinese-language, the search engine is delivering politically filtered results.
The Guardian describes that the search for the Dalai Lama on Chinese-language Bing generated a list with the first link leading to information on a documentary compiled by CCTV, China’s state-owned broadcaster. This was followed by two entries from Baidu Baike, China’s heavily censored search engine. The same search for the Dalai Lama in English-language Bing generated a list headed by the Dalai Lama’s own website then links to his Wikipedia page and news reports along with images of the Dalai Lama, including one from Phayul.com, a pro-Tibetan independence website.
But, as of now, the users from US using Chinese-language Bing are getting similar results to Bing in English. Microsoft claims the alleged censorship to be a glitch in the search engine system which had incorrectly-flagged pages leading to incorrect results.
“Bing does not apply China’s legal requirements to searches conducted outside of China,” said Bing senior director Stefan Weitz in a statement. “Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China.”
The Guardian tried various other sensitive political topics like Falun Gong, and Tiananmen Square protests that returned whitewashed results on the Chinese-language Bing in the US and far more results on the English-language Bing. The report also confirms that same test was tried with Google, which showed no such discrepancy.
