Microsoft's search engine Bing may be censoring some search results in Chinese — even when the searcher is in the United States.
When searching for a term that's controversial in China, like the Dalai Lama, Bing displays very different results if you search in Chinese than in English. The filtered searches were first noticed by activists at GreatFire, an anti-censorship group in China, and first reported by The Guardian.
See also: Activists Foil Chinese Firewall to Unblock Reuters
If you search for the Dalai Lama in English, the first results are his official site and Wikipedia pages about the Buddhist leader. If you search in Chinese though, the first results are entries from Baidu Baike, a Chinese Wikipedia-like encyclopedia run by the country's own search giant Baidu, and a Chinese state TV documentary on the spiritual leader.
When we used Google to search for the Dalai Lama both in Chinese and English, however, the results were very similar.
"It’s a bit crazy. Any Chinese person who is searching in Chinese from overseas is being treated as if they have the same rights as a resident of mainland China," GreatFire's cofounder, Charlie Smith, told the Guardian. "What you get is state controlled propaganda."
China heavily filters the Internet for Chinese users through its so-called Great Firewall, censoring western websites and media reports entirely or selectively. Some media companies have been known to self-censor to avoid angering Chinese leaders. That was the case with Bloomberg News, which reportedly refused to run an investigation into the political connections of China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, so as not to lose reporting access in China, according to The New Republic.
Due to its sophisticated Internet censorship system, China is ranked as the third worst country in terms of Internet Freedom, only behind Iran and Cuba, according to the Freedom of the Net Report by the advocacy group Freedom House.
It's unclear if these differences in search results are directly connected to China's censorship, however. At press time, Microsoft hadn't responded to Mashable's request for comment.
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