Archive for the ‘censorship’ tag
A sobering picture of Internet censorship in China
So the big news of the day is that Google has agreed to censor its search results in China. Because Google had not previously complied with China’s policies, the Chinese government either blocked or severely crippled access to Google. China’s a huge, growing market and being shut out of that market was obviously not good for Google. Immediately after the announcement was made, tons of negative headlines both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere sprouted up. The announcement caught everyone by surprise since agreeing to censor its results is so seemingly un-Google like. It’s kinda hard to “do no evil” if you’re implicitly supporting the Chinese government violate the human rights of their citizens. Google’s counter argument is that their hope is to influence a loosening of Chinese policies over the long-term.
To be honest, while I was surprised by the announcement, I wasn’t planning on losing sleep over the matter. After all, what do I care, right? I’ve got the beautiful 1st Amendment by my side (although we do unfortunately have the FCC). Well…
Other search engines, including Y! and MSN, already censor results in China. Out of curiosity, I searched for ‘tiananmen square’ on both Yahoo! and Yahoo! China. The result was sickening.
‘tiananmen square’ search on Yahoo!
1,790,000 hits. Pages of links describing the 1989 protest/massacre.
‘tiananmen square’ search on Yahoo! China
4 hits. Some junk spam.
Unbelievable. I’m finding it difficult for me not to care. It seems like Google’s need to satisfy its shareholders is corrupting the company’s values again.
UPDATE:
Earlier when I was writing this post, it seemed like Google China had not yet enabled censoring. Although, I just checked again and it looks like in fact it is now.
‘tiananmen square’ search on Google
1,810,000 hits. Pages of links describing the 1989 protest/massacre.
‘tiananmen square’ search on Google China
10 hits. Chinese tourist guides.
I can’t read Chinese but it does look like Google China is in fact printing an alert indicating to the user that the results have been censored.
