[HN Gopher] Notepad++ drops Bing after "tank man" censorship
___________________________________________________________________
Notepad++ drops Bing after "tank man" censorship
Author : FridayoLeary
Score : 230 points
Date : 2021-06-07 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| HardwareLust wrote:
| They should allow us to choose. I'm not jazzed about Notepad++
| deciding for me which search engines I'm "allowed" to use.
|
| Maybe it's time to switch to Atom instead. At least there it's my
| choice.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| If you're that adamant about a specific search engine, a fork
| or a patch set will cover you. Notepad++ is open source.
| computerex wrote:
| It's free and open. You _are_ allowed to choose, and are in no
| way obligated to use notepad++. Similarly, it's author is
| perfectly in the right by omitting bing as an expression of
| protest against unethical censorship.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| We have all been taught that two wrongs does not make a right.
| But I was also taught that not standing up to bullies keeps
| them coming back. More applications should boycott Bing.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I'm not expressing an opinion on the matter myself.
|
| But I would like to say that the project lead and primary
| developer of Notepad++ has political opinions, and uses his
| software as a platform to occasionally exercise them.
|
| This appears to be another example of this whether you agree or
| not with it.
| relativ575 wrote:
| I think you should switch if you think this action of Notepad++
| doesn't reflect your values.
|
| Not a Windows user, but I were I'd be using Notepad++.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Related, UK embassy to China posted a virtual candle on June 4 to
| mark the occasion, and was attacked by thousands of message "RIP
| the Queen" by Weebo's users. I found hilarious that Chinese
| users, or bots, chose to react that distastefully to something
| they pretend didn't happen:
|
| https://www.whatsonweibo.com/uk-embassy-lights-a-virtual-can...
| Animats wrote:
| I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I looked.
| I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that up
| under Tienanmen Square.
| neartheplain wrote:
| I've been familiar with "tank man" as a meme specifically in
| reference to the famous photograph. PBS Frontline ran a great
| documentary in 2009 on the photo and its subject, titled "The
| Tank Man":
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I
| looked.
|
| You can just search for tank man to get a picture of it:
| https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/news/b/bing-image/bing-image...
|
| > I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that
| up under Tienanmen Square.
|
| It may not be the ideal search, but look at how there are _no
| results_. Clearly some kind of censorship mechanism triggered.
| sorenKaram wrote:
| see https://ugolini.co.th/ugolini/microsoft-says-error-caused-
| ta... or https://newsasia.co/microsoft-blames-accidental-human-
| error-...
|
| this code change is in response to the fact that bing was not
| serving up results of the tank man image on the image's
| anniversary.
|
| The Tienanmen square protests were protests for freedom, and
| censoring images does not seem very free.
| mberning wrote:
| Remember when "developers" tried to update the license on their
| code to preclude ICE and the US government from using their open
| source projects due to the "kids in cages" thing? This is much
| more mild but just as pointless an effort. Do they think google
| and many other institutions are not bending over backwards for
| the CCP? Might as well shut the whole project down and quit.
| rhodozelia wrote:
| Did google not leave China? I think they did the opposite of
| bend over
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| This change single-handedly defeated communism
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| You're right, we should never do anything, ever, about anything
| hard, because incrementally makes almost no difference.
| slver wrote:
| These empty moves are not even incremental. They're
| completely irrelevant. He switched to DuckDuckGo which uses
| mostly Bing results. He hosts on GitHub (Microsoft) and his
| app runs on Windows (Microsoft). This patch is theater for
| idiots.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Are you willfully ignoring the very public statement of his
| intent that the article is about?
|
| Obviously economic harm is infinitesimal, but reputational
| harm is more substantial and spreads readily.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus
| stOneskull wrote:
| fingers crossed on the other hand
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Lots of little changes like this add up and get us to a better
| place than we are currently.
| sorenKaram wrote:
| Besides Notepad++ making a statement (which I think does matter),
| their code change will be relatively ineffective, as DuckDuckGo
| gets lots of results from bing anyways.
|
| I see this really as more of a social statement and less as a
| technical solution.
| sigzero wrote:
| It's not the results. It's that DDG doesn't censor.
| inigojonesguy wrote:
| DDG does not censor is false:
| https://telegra.ph/file/1973bcdc321e78cc75172.png
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| The same results were missing from Duckduckgo too.
| warhorse10_9 wrote:
| The results were missing from DDG ecause DDG gets its
| results from Bing. It is about the active choice to censor
| which Bing made, not DDG.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| "A company did something bad. Let's hurt them by
| continuing to give them revenue."
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| You make a good point in the difference in active choice
| but to say duckduckgo doesn't censor results is
| inaccurate is it does even if by proxy of where it
| sources those results from. I do feel this is a no-win
| situation for DDG and I don't think anyone should hold
| this situation against them as they seem to be caught up
| in it against their will.
| franczesko wrote:
| Because DDG uses Bing's API. DDG's results are literally
| the same as Bing's.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| DDG is (largely) a pass-through proxy for search from Bing
| (both Web and image) and for Russian-language media, Yandex.
| It maintains a number of specific search bots that mostly
| provide its intsant-answers content.
|
| (This is based on interpretation of very unclearly worded
| statements and comments from DDG over the years.)
|
| DDG may not censor results itself, _but it inherits the
| censorship policies of its search providers._
|
| (Disclaimer: I've used DDG as my primary Web search for
| nearly a decade, and Images since DDG image search came
| online. I'm strongly critical of DDG's relationship to the
| Tank Man image censorship issue.)
| slver wrote:
| Notepad++ should make a statement and drop Microsoft entirely.
| By moving away from GitHub and dropping support for Windows.
|
| I know what you're thinking. That's my point.
| mayli wrote:
| Do you know Notepad++ is a windows appliation?
| eikenberry wrote:
| I think that is what they were intimating in that last
| sentence. That the Notepad++ devs are implicitly supporting
| MS (and so Bing) by writing a Windows application.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Notepad++ has been a Windows application long before Bing
| was even a twinkle in its creator's eye.
|
| Cancelling your technical platform over decisions that
| its vendor made decades after you originally picked it
| (and discarding approximately all of what you worked for
| over the course of 17 years) smells of a logical fallacy,
| though I can't pinpoint which one.
| adventured wrote:
| The lack of search engine competition - viable alternatives -
| remains a rather massive problem in tech. Notepad++ doesn't
| have much in the way of options, unfortunately.
| slver wrote:
| It sure likes to pretend it does. And ask yourself if that
| isn't worse than doing nothing.
| computerex wrote:
| How is doing nothing better than doing something?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| By that logic we should just throw in the towel and use
| Google/whatever the biggest player is. I refuse to play by
| those rules, even if my resistance is ultimately futile.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| They think that's bad, wait until someone tells them about
| Google.
| cletus wrote:
| I'd love to know the story of this "human error" (that led to
| tank man being censored on Bing). Like... what were they trying
| to do? Why do they this capability at all? Was it unauthorized
| removal from Bing search results? If so, by whom? Why?
|
| Try and get the auto-caption on Tiktok to recognize "Tiananmen
| Square".
|
| It sets a really bad precedent to allow or accept Western
| companies (yes I know Tiktok is Chinese) kowtowing to China in
| the hopes that those companies will gain access to the Chinese
| market. It's widely suspect that not having the American flag on
| the moon landing in the movie "First Man" was to cater to the
| Chinese market.
|
| Let me clue in all the investors and the Western big-tech CEOs on
| a little secret about China: you, as a Western company, will
| never "win" in the Chinese market. The CCP will make sure that
| happens. You are literally wasting your time and debasing
| yourself for something that will never happen.
|
| Take any Western company like Google, Uber or Amazon and the
| dominant player in China will be some homegrown clone of that.
| This is not an accident and it will never change.
|
| It's time the developed world woke up to this as it is openly
| mocking WTO rules about equal access to markets.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Tank man is banned in China. Someone at bing probably was told
| to censor it in China but did it for the entire world instead.
| I really don't understand this argument that western companies
| shouldn't operate in China. How is not censoring and being
| banned any more productive than the status quo? China is too
| politically powerful for anything to be done, especially by
| activist fortune 500 companies.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Saying it's censoring China to not operate there is both a
| matter of semantic spin and also misses the point:
|
| 1) Operating there helps support a repressive regime that
| often uses the tools and services of foreign companies to
| facilitate that repression. I don't think a refusal to
| operate there is censorship, and if you do, that is a broad
| enough definition of censorship that the Montgomery Bus
| Boycott would also fall into that category.
|
| 2) It is also a bad long-term business decision. Between
| forced IP transfer, IP theft, piracy, and enormous subsidies
| for home-grown competitors, most companies are not truly
| growing in an emerging market, they are filling a short term
| gap until China can replace them with their own alternatives,
| bootstrapped by those short term interactions with foreign
| companies. At that point, it is happy to expand those
| homegrown options out to the rest of the world, bootstrapped
| by not having to make the same R&D investments, complete with
| its repressive values embedded in the products & services.
|
| China is not truly interested being a partner country on the
| world stage. It's implicit and explicit goals are self
| sufficiency in service of not needing to even pretend it
| respects anything but its own power. This is revealed every
| time there's a Bing "accident" or another actor is made to
| embarrass themselves in kowtowing to China, or a movie
| changes a Tibetan character to anything but Tibetan, or a
| Hotel corporation like Marriot is forced offline in China
| until it similarly embarrasses itself.
|
| China's goal is to have enough power to forced anyone that
| interacts with it to adopt its own repressive values.
|
| Now at this point in the conversation someone will say "What
| about the things the US does"?
|
| To which I respond:
|
| 1) That's irrelevant to the issue of China. Whatever the US
| does isn't an excuse to allow China to get away with things,
| and other countries and corporations are free to avoid
| dealing with the US in the same way I advocate they avoid
| China.
|
| 2) That's a false equivalence. The US may do objectionable
| things. But when it comes to repression of it's population,
| at it's worst levels of privacy intrusion it still gives it's
| citizens more freedom by an order if magnitude than does
| China.
| slumdev wrote:
| > How is not censoring and being banned any more productive
| than the status quo?
|
| It lets the Chinese Communist Party pretend their citizens
| don't live in a curated bubble designed to reinforce feelings
| of nationalism and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.
|
| Some Chinese are allowed to travel abroad. If they discovered
| a totally different Internet abroad, they might start asking
| uncomfortable questions back home. Instead, CCP bosses hope
| that they simply won't notice that the domestic Bing isn't
| the same as Bing everywhere else.
| rossjudson wrote:
| Your use of the word "hope" there is pretty funny. ;)
|
| I am quite sure that Chinese people travelling abroad are
| 100% familiar with what they should not talk or write about
| once they get home.
| slumdev wrote:
| Yeah, I think very few are under any logical or
| intellectual delusion, but constant reinforcement and
| signaling affects everyone subconsciously.
| ralph84 wrote:
| You don't need to qualify that with "once they get home".
| Chinese who talk or write about the wrong things will be
| hunted down wherever they are in the world. China managed
| to get the UAE to detain a US permanent resident for
| almost two months when he was traveling from Istanbul to
| New York with a connection in Dubai.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/europe-china-dubai-middle-
| east-he...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Chinese people understand that their internet is censored.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >How is not censoring and being banned any more productive
| than the status quo?
|
| Any company that does this for content in China, but "only"
| in China raises serious doubts when they say they are not
| doing it anywhere else. If you add this ability, it will be
| misused/abused either by "rogue" employees, being hacked, or
| being forced to by gov't because of "terrorism" or "the
| kids".
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Companies have to comply with differing laws and
| regulations based on the jurisdictions they operate in. I
| honestly don't have serious doubt that Microsoft does this
| in the US other than because of a technical error because
| they simply have no incentive to.
|
| They can add this ability at any point anyway because
| putting a phrase into a word filter takes about 10 minutes
| I guess.
|
| What is the logical alternative here, every American
| company leaves every other market because they have
| differing censorship laws? How is that helping anyone else?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You are way too scoped in on this specific issue. View
| the topic of bending to CCP will in other areas of tech,
| not just search. Cloud providers operating in China is a
| big area of concern. If these providers have built in the
| ability for the CCP to access user data, then there's no
| way they could ever stand up to US gov't asking for the
| same access. That's just a single example.
| yongjik wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm following this argument here. When the US
| government calls any major internet company and say "Hey we
| found this and this information on this page of yours and
| it's illegal to host the information, so please take it
| down, or else," does anybody seriously think that these
| companies will say no?
|
| * Now, I'm definitely not a fan of the Chinese government,
| but the truth is that every government has power to order
| around any corporation that wants to do business in its
| border. The difference is how much you agree with each
| particular government, not whether they do it or not.
| pedroma wrote:
| It seems fairly common for companies to deny and disclose
| requests from the US government. Not only is it a good
| publicity stunt advocating free speech / privacy, but
| what can the government do if it's not illegal content?
| dylan604 wrote:
| If the provider in question is hosting publicly visible
| pages with "offending" content, then of course anyone is
| free to "report" it or "request" it. If the provider is
| hosting end-to-end ecrypted data, then nobody _should_
| have access to it other than those with the proper keys.
| That includes the provider of the services. In that case,
| the provider can only say no to the gov 't requests. If
| the provider has a different version of their platform
| available in China so that they conform to CCP demands of
| being able to access user content, then the provder would
| be lying to the US gov't request for access to user data
| too. So the suspicion that a US company operating in
| China with CCP approval immediately brings doubt onto
| their entire "we protect user privacy" into question.
| lsiebert wrote:
| I think China is happy to let in physical products like Apple,
| but it wants the internet stuff under it's control.
| mywittyname wrote:
| You're absolutely right. But from a Chinese perspective, they
| see open access to American companies for what it is:
| neocolonialism. They don't want American companies coming in,
| buying up all of the local brands, and siphoning off the
| profits back to America. The Chinese also don't want these
| large American companies using their business power to direct
| local politics.
|
| Just look at the attitude that Google, Palantir, and similar
| have for Europeans. I bet there are times that Germany wished
| they had their own Baidu. China is doing what it can to stop
| from becoming an American vassal.
| agency wrote:
| Is there any evidence regarding that "First Man" anecdote? I
| remember this being a big thing in the conservative culture
| sphere in at the time but it seems like a manufactured
| controversy. Are there not American flags in all manner of big
| blockbusters that do huge numbers in China? The character
| "Captain America" doesn't seem to have stopped the MCU movies
| from succeeding there. The whole thing feels like people just
| looking to get angry about something.
| alias_neo wrote:
| We nom-Americans are well aware of the "flag tax".
|
| We know Hollywood gets tax cuts for bigger, more numerous and
| slower-mo shots of American flags in their films.
|
| Clearly "First Man" was making a statement about this special
| treatment.
| [deleted]
| hintymad wrote:
| Before we even get to the political side of "you will never win
| in the Chinese market", how do we explain that Amazon lost to
| jt.com, and Walmart (and a slew of other retailers) lost to
| local retails? The Chinese government didn't favor the local
| retailers in anyway. Another case is Uber vs DiDi. The Chinese
| government didn't favor Didi either, yet DiDi managed to beat
| Uber hands down. Specifically, Didi managed to be profitable in
| short trips while losing money on long trips, and Uber's biz
| team found it out months later. Kinda shameful, if you ask me.
| xenihn wrote:
| >The Chinese government didn't favor the local retailers in
| anyway.
|
| Do you have proof of this?
| hintymad wrote:
| Should it be the other way around, namely do we have proof
| that the Chinese government interfered? I do acknowledge
| that it's hard to know for sure that something does not
| exist. It's just that there's plenty of news on how Chinese
| government play favors for its auto industry, for Baidu,
| and for media companies. But somehow I didn't see any
| report or even anecdote on retailing, and certainly not for
| Did (some cities tried to regulate both Uber and Didi).
| sennight wrote:
| > how do we explain that Amazon lost to jt.com...
|
| JTI? Of Japan? The one where the Japanese government is
| legally required to own at least a third?
| hintymad wrote:
| My bad. JD.com. Updated.
| guilhas wrote:
| This sounds dumb
|
| I have never heard of "tank man", and Tienanmen square is not my
| first thought
|
| And what about google? It is still there after several recent
| controversial issues
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Then educate yourself. The tank man photo taken during the 1989
| Tiananmen Square Massacre is widely considered one of the most
| important and iconic images of the 20th century.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Not OP, but to be fair, I'm well aware of the Tiananmen
| Square protests and the man who confronted and blocked the
| path of the big tank...
|
| And yet I've not once heard it referred to as "tank man"
| until this incident with Bing.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Maybe you're not well aware enough. Tank man has been
| around for as long as I can remember. It's has been the
| title of a PBS documentary from 2006:
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transc
| r...
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| If you're looking for the tank man image, here's video of the
| incident: https://twitter.com/whoiszhu/status/1400950918464561156
|
| Worth seeing if you've never seen it in motion. Glad he survived.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Has there ever been confirmation of this though? To my
| knowledge his ID is not known, and there were lots of
| disappeared students after this.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| He was not run over, and this was news to me. There is no
| evidence either way what may have happened later, but the
| only ones claiming for sure that he was later executed are
| U.S. government officials.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| yeah seems impossible to know. though we do know there was
| a lot of political disappearing and murdering going on.
|
| i don't even know if those 'pancake' photos actually
| happened
|
| PLA has been successful in that regard.
| niea_11 wrote:
| From the article linked in the commit :
|
| _Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error
| and we are actively working to resolve this."_
|
| It was not intentional and not a result of a request from China,
| so why ban the search engine?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-con...
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| Not the first time this has happened and attributed to an
| "error"
|
| 2014: _Bing has been filtering out both English and Chinese
| language search results for politically-sensitive terms such as
| "Dalai Lama" and "Tiananmen"_ [0]
|
| [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-denies-
| accusations-o...
| niea_11 wrote:
| Thanks for the link. I presumed it was a one time thing.
|
| As other commenters said, may be it's intentional but the
| change was supposed to be visible only inside China and then
| someone messed up and it leaked to search results outside of
| China. (for example : a bad update to the rule censoring the
| subject inside china made it visible worldwide)
|
| For me, it seems unlikely that they did it on purpose. not
| because they are good but because no company wants this kind
| of publicity.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human
| error and we are actively working to resolve this."
|
| Is there any further explanation? Sounds like an obvious lie.
| marricks wrote:
| Why oh why are so many people just buying what Microsoft is
| selling here? For a person give them the benefit of the doubt
| sure, but this is a feature which isn't turned off and on
| with a simple switch. Either:
|
| 1) Microsoft did this intentionally and want to shift they
| blame anyway the can (which is bad)
|
| or
|
| 2) They censor tons many topics and had a whoopsie on this
| one (even worse??)
|
| Unless they give a deep explanation of how this happened
| quickly I am personally giving them no benefit of the doubt
| hughrr wrote:
| I doubt it's a lie. The explanation is simply shit enough to
| cover all possible outcomes.
|
| Really internally it's now being pondered by the _Corporate
| Apologetics_ team at Microsoft which will follow the standard
| 3 point plan:
|
| 1. Quick everyone, explain it away as _" human error"_.
|
| 2. All we have to do now is stick our fingers in our ears and
| hope it stops trending on Twitter and then we're good.
|
| 3. Well fuck, that failed so we better make some large
| marketoid gesture about never doing it again which will
| consist of hiring someone in the position of _" Senior Vice
| President of Never Getting Caught Doing This Particular Thing
| Again"_.
|
| Of course the last point will fail miserably in this case as
| they will of course immediately hire someone who posted
| something nasty on Twitter several years ago...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think it's certainly a lie. Even if what they mean is "We
| accidentally censored in more locales than we wanted" they
| are lying by trying to conceal what happened rather than
| reveal it with misleading statements. Microsoft is
| censoring search results at either the explicit or implicit
| request of China. It's despicable.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > "We accidentally censored in more locales than we
| wanted"
|
| If that actually did happen to be the reason, then "human
| error" would be completely accurate. Not even just
| technically correct, but a reasonable description.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| No, it wouldn't be either. It's an incomplete description
| that intentionally creates the misleading interpretation
| that this wasn't intentional censorship but a mistake. In
| reality, this was intentional censorship, possibly
| applied in an overly broad way.
|
| Saying things to intentionally cause your audience to
| come to incorrect conclusions is lying. A reasonable
| description does not omit relevant details.
|
| Similar, if I said "My car accident was caused but human
| error" that would not be a correct or reasonable
| description if it were actually caused by my driving
| while drunk. I could as easily say it was caused by
| physics. The problem is that these lies elide my
| wrongdoing.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| My guess is that they tried to censor it in China, but
| affected everybody by accident.
| acmj wrote:
| This would be my guess. MS just can't openly admit they
| censor in China even though everyone knows this is how they
| are allowed to operate in China, so they use "human error"
| as a bad excuse.
| jfengel wrote:
| It seems an odd thing to lie about. It's so easy to get
| caught at it, and they seem to have done it very clumsily.
| And the upside seems so small -- both for China (if they
| requested it) and for Microsoft (if they were volunteering).
|
| It does seem like the kind of thing that could happen in
| error, albeit an error that would probably produce millions
| of other problems (such as other missing images). Did that
| happen and none of the others attracted enough attention?
|
| If they said, "Yeah, we patched a bunch of servers, but some
| data center was temporarily down, they didn't get the patch,
| and that just happened to be the one having that image," I'd
| say, "Yeah, that seems reasonable." No idea if it's true, but
| it sounds enough like other bugs I've committed.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Not sure if it's a lie or not, but region specific
| constraints should be frequent enough to warrant automatic
| testing?
| class4behavior wrote:
| Probably because they aren't buying the lazy excuse that
| coincidentally on the anniversary there was an issue. Another
| point is that the author is politically outspoken.
| blibble wrote:
| would you expect MS PR to say anything other than that, even if
| it was deliberate?
| niea_11 wrote:
| As I said in another comment, for me it seems unlikely to be
| deliberate because of the bad publicity it will generate.
|
| I'm not defending Microsoft. It just seemed to me a little
| bit weird to "punish" them for a one time mistake. But as
| another commenter showed me, this kind of stuff happened
| before.
|
| Still, I'm finding it hard to believe it was deliberate.
| Mistakes happen. (maybe I'm naive :))
| jsnell wrote:
| Also discussed earlier today in context of the release notes:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726
| _Microft wrote:
| The discussion on the new Notepad++ release already saw some
| discussion on this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726
| jonas21 wrote:
| Ironically, the change replaces Bing queries with DuckDuckGo,
| which gets its results primarily from Bing, and also showed
| censored results for "tank man".
| vultour wrote:
| Which means all this crying about "censoring the censorship" is
| pointless. You now get Bing results + privacy, why are you
| complaining?
| throwaway20875 wrote:
| Not true.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Why do you claim this is not true? I observed it myself, as
| did many other HN users:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
| chippy wrote:
| "Don't let perfect be the enemy of Good". However, there is a
| certain very visible irony in that Microsoft runs both GitHub and
| Bing.
| slver wrote:
| It also runs Windows, and Notepad++ is a Windows app.
| dang wrote:
| The recent relevant threads:
|
| _Microsoft says error led to no matching Bing images for
| Tiananmen 'tank man'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400774 - June 2021 (10
| comments)
|
| _"Tank Man"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397486 -
| June 2021 (54 comments)
|
| _The story of the Tank Man photo by its photographer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27396783 - June 2021 (138
| comments)
|
| _There are no results for tank man_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 - June 2021 (529
| comments)
|
| _The iconic 'Tank Man' photo_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 - June 2021 (4
| comments)
|
| _Tank Man_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394943 -
| June 2021 (15 comments)
|
| _Ask HN: "Tank man" image search blocked on Bing and DuckDuckGo_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 - June 2021 (126
| comments)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| And replaced it with DuckDuckGo, which also had it missing.
|
| These actions are usually meaningless, but that makes it extra
| meaningless.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| At least at that point Bing just becomes an implementation
| detail of DuckDuckGo rather than something Notepad++ uses
| directly. But yeah, this is definitely not intended to do
| anything other than be a political statement from Notepad++.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I agree it's pretty meaningless [Edit: in fact i posted this in
| the hope that someone would actually say that]. Didn't Google
| have the same issue? (correct me if i'm wrong). But still,
| bing's "explanation" was so incredibly pathetic, weak and
| opaque, it deserves to be dropped just for that
|
| "This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively
| working to resolve this." In their own words. That's it!? They
| should be tripping over their feet in their haste to apologize!
| Executives should be coming out of the woodwork apologizing to
| everyone in sight and offering explanations to congress. But
| that's just my humble opinion.
| delroth wrote:
| No, Google didn't have this issue, because unlike pretty much
| all other search engines on the market Google isn't a
| frontend to Bing (well, I guess there are also a few
| frontends to Yandex, but they're more rare).
| baud147258 wrote:
| it might depends on something, but DDG is returning results for
| the tank man search, including images
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I see this as _slightly_ resembling the "EV in a coal-fired
| electricity generation regime _.
|
| Yes, using an EV in a location where the _present primary
| source of generation* is coal has relatively minor impacts on
| the _immediate_ carbon emissions profile of transportation.
|
| But _decoupling_ an activity from _immediate_ reliance on a
| specific mode makes future progress more viable.
|
| DuckDuckGo was also strongly criticised for the Tank Man image
| censorship, despite "merely" being a consumer of Bing's image
| search. DDG themselves have a reputation to be concerned with,
| and have been increasing their own public outreach and
| advertising over recent years, including radio spots (my
| principle commercial media exposure presently).
|
| So, no, it's not a complete fix. Given the limited options and
| degree of search market monopoly, it does remain a signal.
| Though it's also a sharp reminder of the extreme limits of the
| "consumer choice" argument in a case in which that choice
| simply does not exist.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| I searched the term in DDG when this was on HN previously; the
| search was _not_ censored on DDG. [edit] I recall it was at the
| time bing 's search was still blank but I don't have a
| technical explanation for the different results.
| donohoe wrote:
| I believe it was - but only because DDG relies on Bing for
| much of its search
| MattGaiser wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
|
| Maybe DDG corrected it earlier? But DDG is as affected for
| many on here.
| [deleted]
| inigojonesguy wrote:
| https://archive.is/yemlH
| [deleted]
| simias wrote:
| Doesn't DuckDuckGo use Bing's results behind the scenes?
|
| At any rate right now I see no obvious censorship:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tank+man&iax=images&ia=imag...
| mdoms wrote:
| As long as DDG uses Bing's results then they also implement
| Bing's censorship policies. That's a choice DDG makes.
| adventured wrote:
| That's because Microsoft got caught censoring the results,
| then they lied and claimed it was a "human error," which
| absolutely nobody believes.
|
| Then Microsoft manually took an action to restore the image
| results in Bing for the query "tank man." Which then filtered
| down to DDG since it relies on Bing (previously DDG's image
| results were similarly devoid of the proper results).
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > That's because Microsoft got caught censoring the
| results, then they lied and claimed it was a "human error,"
| which absolutely nobody believes.
|
| Oh, I don't know. If we can label "accidentally using the
| wrong scope" as a human error, I could easily see a
| situation where someone meant to remove something from
| Chinese search results but accidentally did it worldwide. I
| don't know what their infrastructure is like, what kind of
| safeguards they have in place, or even what they do to
| block a result from the all-seeing algorithm. Which is more
| likely: that Microsoft would allow China to dictate what
| the rest of the world can/cannot see or that someone made a
| mistake and blocked something globally instead of
| regionally?
| relativ575 wrote:
| I find it baffled that a company of that caliber don't
| have regression tests that can verify region-bound
| changes wouldn't affect results intended for other
| regions.
| Arnavion wrote:
| >Then Microsoft manually took an action to restore the
| image results in Bing for the query "tank man."
|
| Did they? https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man has
| no results of Tank Man. https://imgur.com/a/U5fDs7P (If you
| _do_ see Tank Man images, see the edit at the end of this
| comment.)
|
| If you press enter on the search box with the pre-filled
| "tank man", then you get a URL with more query-string
| parameters - https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man&
| imgurl=&cbir=s... , and that page _does_ contain the actual
| Tank Man.
|
| Seems it can be narrowed down to the form= parameter.
| https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man&form=QBILPG
| has Tank Man, without the form= it doesn't. The actual
| value of the form= parameter doesn't value either, as long
| as it's not empty.
|
| I have no idea what they're doing in the backend.
|
| Edit: Another weird thing -
| https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man with JS
| enabled redirects to a different page with additional
| querystring parameters, and this page does have Tank Man.
| My testing above was done with JS disabled, which is why I
| got the pre-redirect page that doesn't have his pictures.
| lamontcg wrote:
| they probably need the query string for pagination and if
| you don't have it they redirect you with some javascript
| which you turning it off breaks. i don't think there's
| any grand conspiracy there.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Yes, I didn't claim they were doing it intentionally,
| just that the website's behavior is weird. That's why I
| said:
|
| >I have no idea what they're doing in the backend.
|
| The pagination theory doesn't make sense to me though.
| The relevant parameter is called "form", its actual value
| doesn't matter as long as it's non-empty, and surely a
| sane implementation would treat the lack of a page
| parameter as page 1 and not page whatever-the-
| stormtrooper-image-is-on.
| throwaway20875 wrote:
| Thank you Notepad++ for standing against censorship. We need to
| see more of this.
| monksy wrote:
| I'm still not seeing the images of the protest from the search.
| I'm seeing results about the censure of the image.
|
| This is what I'm seeing: https://imgur.com/a/P9l23Di
| xlmnxp wrote:
| Is there anyone use it this days? Microsoft VSCoder better then
| it by a lot, I dont think they can do something by removing Bing
| pedroma wrote:
| Yeah, it _feels_ quicker and lighter to edit small text files.
| If NP++ didn 't exist, I'd still use notepad.exe rather than
| opening VSCode for these light edits.
| sideshowb wrote:
| I do
| chapium wrote:
| This can be modified using Settings/Preferences/Search Engine.
| From there you can use whatever search engine you want. This is a
| non-issue.
| lupire wrote:
| I don't think a software product that removes features for a
| momentary political fad is a reliable product.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Censorship is a "momentary political fad"?
| guilhas wrote:
| When Trump was censored from twitter, youtube, facebook...
| people were very quick to call it private company's freedom
| jbay808 wrote:
| Sounds like you agree that Bing is an unreliable product.
| Understandable that Notepad++ would drop support.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not removing a _feature_ , it's shortening the list of
| search engines.
| echelon wrote:
| > momentary political fad
|
| I don't think the Tiananmen Square democracy protests qualify
| as a "momentary political fad".
|
| Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Uighur, et al. independence/democracy
| is an important, ongoing issue.
|
| A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true for
| the world.
| FredPret wrote:
| > A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true
| for the world.
|
| Only if it works better than Russia. I suspect it takes
| generations to inculcate a love of free speech and public
| participation in government
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| The Chinese already participate in local government to some
| extent, from what I've read.
| LegitShady wrote:
| A multi party democratic china is a dream in many ways,
| including its relation to reality.
| ericls wrote:
| These two things are simply not connected. The author can do
| what he want, he can also make it play Chinese national anthem
| when starting the software, and it'll be the same. It's not
| connected to the reliability of the software. He's free to do
| whatever, as long as it doesn't violate other people's rights.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-06-07 23:02 UTC)