Microsoft’s Bing accused of censoring US search results
Microsoft has been accused of censoring sensitive results from its Bing search engine in the US, restricting results for terms such as ‘Dalai Lama’ and ‘Falun Gong’ in a similar fashion to the way it filters results in China.
The claim is made by anti-censorship campaigners at FreeWeibo who ground that Bing returned demonstrably different results in the States for English and Chinese terms.
When US residents type in a Chinese language search for ‘Dalai Lama’ the lead entry returned is for a Chinese State TV documentary on the figure, followed by two entries from a heavily censored Chinese take on Wikipedia.
When the same search is conducted in English Bing links to the Dalai Lama’s own Wikipedia page and includes pictures of the leader.
The results contrast with Google which returns broadly similar results irrespective of language.
Microsoft has refused to comment on the issue.