Microsoft Corp has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” — a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square — on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.
Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including France, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and the US, according to Reuters and Vice News.
References to the pro-democracy protest movement have long been censored in China, where the government maintains strict control over the Internet, but the censorship by Bing extended to users outside China’s “great firewall.”
Photo: AP
Microsoft said the issue was “due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this.”
Smaller search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, that license results from Microsoft faced similar issues around “tank man” searches and said they expected a fix soon.
Rival Google showed many results for the famous image when the “tank man” search was performed on Friday and yesterday.
The incident came amid China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, where it banned the Tiananmen Square anniversary vigil for the second year in a row, and growing concern over the extent to which China can exert economic pressure to enforce its censoriousness overseas.
Just last week, US actor John Cena made a public apology for referring to Taiwan as “a country,” an offense to China, which insists that Taiwan is not an independent state.
US-based tech companies have long struggled to balance their desire to operate in China’s enormous market with the censorship demands of the government.
Microsoft Bing is one of the few foreign search engines that are accessible in China, because the company has agreed to censor results for sensitive terms such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong.
In 2016, the New York Times reported that Facebook was working on a secret tool that would allow a third party to censor the platform for Chinese users in exchange for Beijing allowing Facebook to operate within the country.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
One person was killed and another seven injured today when a tourist shuttle bus plunged 30m to 40m down a ravine in Nantou County, the Tourism Administration said. The bus is suspected to have suddenly accelerated out of control near the flower center of the Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area, a popular attraction during cherry blossom season. Of the eight onboard, a 66-year-old man was killed, four were seriously injured and three sustained minor injuries, including the driver. The Nantou County Police Department said it received a report of the incident at 12:15pm and dispatched seven teams to assist. All surviving passengers have been transferred
RSS