Microsoft blames 'accidental human error' for Tank Man censorship on Tiananmen Square anniversary
Microsoft has blamed "accidental human error" for its search engine
Bing failing to produce any results for 'Tank Man' on the anniversary of
the Tiananmen Square protests.
Users in the UK, US, Germany and Singapore
were met with the message "There are no results for tank man" when they
searched for it on Friday - the 32nd anniversary of the demonstrations.
'Tank Man' refers to an image of a lone protester standing in the
path of an oncoming tank during the suppression of student-led protests
in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Although
the man was never identified, it has become the defining image of the
military crackdown, which many refer to as the Tiananmen Square
Massacre, and killed between hundreds and thousands of people.
Microsoft has been accused of censoring the image and co-operating with China, which refers to the suppression as the 'June 4 incident' and bans any discussion of it.
Although China applies censorship to search engines operating in its
jurisdiction, it has no power to ban content beyond its borders.
A large number of Microsoft employees who work on Bing are located in China.
Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, tweeted to say the "inadvertent error" was "hard to believe". "Outrageous," he posted.
David
Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
said that content moderation often poses challenges for search engines
and "egregious mistakes are made all the time".
But he added: "At worst, this was a purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state."
Chinese communities across the world gathered in solidarity to
remember those lost in the protests, who were fighting against rapid
socio-economic change in the post-Mao era.
In Hong Kong,
where China passed national security laws earlier this year, protests
were less busy than usual after authorities banned them. People wore
masks and held up their smartphones in lieu of the usual candlelit
vigil.
The organiser barrister Chow Hang Tung, 36, was arrested hours before it took place.
Microsoft
said in a statement that the issue was "due to an accidental human
error" and the site was "actively working to resolve this".
The 'Tank Man' images had returned to the search engine in the UK early on Saturday.
