Microsoft accused of censoring Tiananmen Square 'tank man'
Microsoft came under fire for allegedly stopping users in some countries from viewing China's 'tank man', prompting accusations of censorship. On June 4, 2021, users in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, and France discovered that searching for "Tank Man" on Bing Images returned a message stating: "There are no results for tank man." This occurred on the anniversary of the 1989 military crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where the iconic image of a lone protester facing a line of tanks became a global symbol of resistance. The censorship extended beyond Bing. Privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, which license search results from Microsoft, also displayed zero images of the event. The block lasted for several hours before being resolved. Even after the initial "fix," some users reported that the search engine only returned generic images of tanks rather than the historical protest photo. The incident prompted accusations of censorship; Microsoft officially attributed the incident to "accidental human error," though the company failed to provide specific technical details on how such a specific "error" coincided precisely with a politically sensitive anniversary. System 🤖 Bing Search Developer: Microsoft Country: China Sector: Politics Purpose: Rank content/search results Technology: Search engine algorithm Issue: Accountability; Accuracy/reliability; Human/civil rights; Transparency
- Date it happened
- 2021-06-01
- Organisation involved
- Microsoft
- Product, system or model
- Bing search
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