Bing censoring names considered ‘sensitive’ to Chinese governmen

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Microsoft Bing’s Chinese Political Censorship of Autosuggestions in North America

[…]However, what is less clear is why the United States’ autosuggestions are so similar to that of China’s, including in their Chinese political censorship. While we might imagine, since the international version of Bing’s China search engine was developed as an English language search engine for Chinese users, that it might be a thin wrapper around the search engine in the United States, what is less obvious is how Chinese politically motivated censorship is moving in the other direction, from the international China search engine to the United States.

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OscarCP, Mr. Austin, Alex5723

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Hegemony is the word which comes to mind. And that’s *never* a good thing.

Finance, social and tech founder. Managing director of new crowd sourced games in pre-release development. Director on a new consortium to bring fractional ownership of heritage antiquities to the blockchain. My planet-wide talk show for people craving new stories by which to live is Casual Saints.

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Cybertooth

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I have Bing by default in one browser, but do not use it. I have read a number of unfavorable comments here and there about less-than-friendly-to-users practices, and I prefer to avoid being subject to them by not using it. Now the latest one mentioned here by Cybertooth, if true as reported in the article linked in the opening comment, it just takes the cake!

But if all that Bing does is to suppress suggestions in autofill, then for someone like myself, who systematically ignores autofill and invariably types the keywords one wishes to use, this is not a serious obstacle to the free flow of information. Just a disgusting non-issue that could  make someone with a suspicious mind, nevertheless, wonder what else the owner of Bing might be up to here.

More information on this issue:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/citizen_lab_microsoft_bing_report/

“Microsoft responded to a notification from Citizen Lab, and called the lack of autofill terms a “technical error” and said they’d resolved the issue.“

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Cybertooth

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OscarCP wrote:

But if all that Bing does is to suppress suggestions in autofill, then for someone like myself, who systematically ignores autofill and invariably types the keywords one wishes to use, this is not a serious obstacle to the free flow of information.

I feel you and agree with the vibes of what you wrote. Thank you.

And, at the same time, I see you, me, and other knowledgeable (even gifted) geeks as significant influencers on what policies are vital to encourage truly free flow of information against the (obviously) hegemonic sources of inflammation (pun intentional) from Microsoft, Amazon, Duck Duck Go, Google, and the usual mega-behemoth sources which control worldwide media.

The massively huge in number, uninformed masses of consumers who aren’t privy to this site, who hardly ever question their search results – are those whom I’d prefer to have choose what they consume. Garbage In = Garbage Out, GIGO, is a very old computer programmers term for flows of information. Instead we are all of us best served by Truth In = Choices Out, TICO.

When one truly follows the money, and its force, and the invested control of mainstream media into very selfish, murderously-controlled narratives, those lines of thought inevitably lead one to the media ownership and media control of two primary companies, BlackRock and Vanguard. Not including the massively pervasive CCP.

Finance, social and tech founder. Managing director of new crowd sourced games in pre-release development. Director on a new consortium to bring fractional ownership of heritage antiquities to the blockchain. My planet-wide talk show for people craving new stories by which to live is Casual Saints.

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Cybertooth

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OscarCP wrote:

non-issue that could  make someone with a suspicious mind, nevertheless, wonder what else the owner of Bing might be up to here.

Thank you. And there are, at the very least, hundreds of millions of us who question everything the news media, and their back-end technologies, when they want us to think something. Because long experience has shown us that absolute force corrupts absolutely.

Finance, social and tech founder. Managing director of new crowd sourced games in pre-release development. Director on a new consortium to bring fractional ownership of heritage antiquities to the blockchain. My planet-wide talk show for people craving new stories by which to live is Casual Saints.

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Cybertooth

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