Did Microsoft’s Bing search engine export some Chinese censorship to the US?
Bing today was blocking image searches in the US for “Tank Man,” a famous image taken during 1989’s Tiananmen Square Massacre in China.
The image shows an unidentified Chinese man standing up to a column of tanks. But if you queried the term “tank man” through Bing’s image search in the US, you received no results, even with the safe search filter turned off.
Vice was first to report the news after Google security researcher Shane Huntley tweeted about the image blocking. The issue is particularly glaring when you compare the Bing results to Google’s, which feature numerous Tank Man photos.
In addition, DuckDuckGo, which uses Bing, was also producing no results for Tank Man earlier on Friday. However, the issue only affected image search. A regular text-based search referred people to the Wikipedia entry for Tank Man.
The image blocking occurs on the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which involved China violently cracking down on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing. The country generally censors all mention of the event, which has forced internet sites operating in China, including Bing, to filter out the content.
Bing’s compliance with the censorship should only apply to users based in mainland China—not for users elsewhere. So naturally, the image blocking for Tank Man in the US sparked concern.
In response, Microsoft said it was a glitch, not censorship. “This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this,” a company spokesperson said.
Bing’s image search now appears to be returning results for the term “tank man.” But many of the images are for tanks, instead of the historical photo.
