It is not news that over in China, the government is pretty heavy-handed when it comes to censoring information. To that extent social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are banned. However it seems that due to a technical error, Microsoft’s Bing search has accidentally censored search results for Chinese-language users in the US, the same way it would have been censored in mainland China. At least that’s what Microsoft claims. This is based on a report from The Guardian who were the ones of reported on the alleged censorship.
According to censorship blog, Greatfire who initially discovered the censorship, it was found that certain websites and topics that could be found on Google could not be found on Bing when attempting to search using the Chinese language. Website author Charlie Smith claimed that the results were “radically different results in the US for English and Chinese language searches.” Microsoft has since denied claims that they were actively censoring search results and have attributed it to a technical error. According to Stefan Weitz, the senior director of Bing, he claimed that this was due to errors in Bing’s system and that Bing does not apply China’s legal requirements. However according to sources of The Verge, they state that Microsoft would have to adhere to China’s censorship laws if the IP address were to originate from China itself.
Filed in . Read more about Bing (Microsoft), China and Microsoft.