zlacker

>>rcoves+(OP)
https://twitter.com/MikaelThalen/status/1400906032176640004

A Microsoft spokesperson tells me that "accidental human error" is to blame for missing images of "tank man" on its Bing search results.

"We are actively working to resolve this."

The incident comes on the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

>>iso163+xL
There's no way it was accidental. It could have been a rogue employee that pushed something globally that was supposed to be limited to China...but the idea that it was an accident on the anniversary sounds like a made up story.

>>partia+HP
Or it could have been a normal employee that ticked the "censor everywhere" box rather than "censor china"

>>iso163+bR
But why would it happen today? The term is likely censored year round in China, why would it suddenly go from China to global?

>>partia+RR
A lot of terms in China only get censored around the sensitive dates. Or, to put it differently, around the time that there is a sensitive date (PRC anniversary, CCP anniversary, June 4 etc) there seems to a burst of newly-censored terms. Because there is no official list of banned terms, this is done proactively by censors in the tech companies who want to avoid a potential warning from the government or pile-on from nationalist netizens.

It's possible that the English term "tank man" wasn't censored on Bing image search in China before, but it is now. Over there the Tiananmen massacre is usually referred to as the June 4 incident, so it's usually the characters 六四 (6 and 4) that are censored in search results. Because Bing isn't a very popular website in China, it might be that "tank man" slipped through until now.