Mediaboss Marketing

Microsoft denied censoring Chinese-language search results across the globe, but the group behind the accusation stood firm.

We can emphatically confirm that they are not, Microsofts senior director of Bing search engine Stefan Weitz said in a blog post addressing talk of political censorship.

Bing search results outside of China are not subject to and are not modified in any way based on Chinese law.

The US-based technology titan blamed the impression of censorship on a Chinese removal notification accidentally shown to people using a Bing Peoples Republic of China version outside of that country.

The message was displayed for Bing results suppressed for non-political reasons, such as barred images of abuse or spam, and had nothing to do with Chinese censors, according to Microsoft.

- Microsoft claim simply not true -

Cyber-censorship monitoring group Greatfire.org rejected the denial in an online post titled No error here: Microsoft deploying Chinese censorship on a global scale.

Microsofts assertion that search results are not altered outside of China are simply not true, Greatfire said in a point-by-point rebuttal to the companys explanation.

Greatfire referred to tests reportedly done by The Guardian newspaper, which did a Bing search on a Chinese government official embroiled in a corruption scandal and saw no Western news reports on the first results page.

A Google search in Chinese on the same name turned up an array of news stories, as did a similar Bing search in English, according to Greatfire.

View original post here:
Site Last Updated 3:18 pm, Thursday