Google Highlights Censored Search Terms In China 99
itwbennett writes "Responding to complaints from Chinese Googlers that the search engine is 'inconsistent and unreliable,' Google has updated its service to help users steer clear of search queries that will result in page errors. Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection. 'By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post."
Re:This makes a lot of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
leave people the hell alone to conduct their lives in peace already!
Sorry, but you were filtered... nobody could read you there.
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Gmail uses ssl, search may or may not.
Don't see why your Gmail would break.
But this is another reason all the USA haters out there should really consider whether they want the Internet run by the UN as China is now proposing.
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Hidden censorship (Score:1)
Hidden censorship is worse than obvious censorship. Shame on Google for hiding China's shame.
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I'm still trying to work out if Google is not being American evil, not being Chinese evil, being completely evil, or not being evil at all in all of this.
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don't forget, goog is an AD AGENCY.
remember bewitched (the 60's sitcom)? darren was an ad-man. the precursor of what google is, today, essentially.
you think an advertising agency can be anything BUT evil?
come on. get real. I know they give shiny things out, but you have to always remember what their mission in life is. TO SELL THINGS (on behalf of others).
if you keep it in perspective, you never again confuse google with some benevolent organization.
like things in the modern world, when someone tries t
Re:Hidden censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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You forgot to toss in a couple "U R TEH PRODUCT NOT TEH CUSTMERZ!!!1!!1!LAWL"s in there just for good measure and increased fearmogering.
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>>>google is simply a company. companies are never there for your benefit. never.
I agree with the first sentence, because companies should not be worshipped like football teams. They are inaminate entities and nothing more. But disagree with the second. Companies ARE there to serve the customer and keep him/her happy, because it they don't they end-up like Montgomery Wards or Circuit Shitty (bankrupt).
I visited Wards during its final selloff. The employees there looked extremely depressed, and
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So far Google has been winning the votes, while other ad agencies like Youtube struggle to survive.
Head asplode.
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Yes they are. I invest in companies, companies pay my salary, pay taxes, invest in research that improves lives. My retirement fund is filled with companies working on maximizing profit and I don't mind any of that, because it will make my retirement better.
Companies make things and provide services that I pay money for, because if I were to make those things or do those services, they are more expensive and not done as well.
WHAT I don't like is when compani
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Walmart used to be a decent company. Now, it is nothing more than a machine that forces crappier and crappier products and services upon the unsuspecting and uncaring people.
Dude, I'm pretty sure that's specifically Walmart's business model - cheap for cheap.
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No, Google is a magazine publishing a new edition every time you hit Search. The are paid by the ad agencies every time they place one in front of you, then more if you click on it, etc., whereas Time only gets paid for the column-inch of ads.
Seriously, telling users (who aren't customers, after all) what terms to avoid is about as far as Google can go, until they acquire their own nuclear arsenal and demonstrate a willingness to use it. The PRC is doing the censorship, not Google.
Re:Hidden censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
I would think that giving people interactive hints that can be used to work around censorship is generally 'not evil'. More evil than taking a stand and ignoring the Chinese government until they're completely blocked and replaced wholesale with a Chinese government controlled search engine? Perhaps, perhaps not.
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Hw are they hiding it? They're blatantly pointing out that users shouldn't use terms least they be disconnected or run into censorship, even for common things that they might not have thought of before. Now youll probably get a warning for something when you weren't even remotely looking for something subversive.
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I could of sworn I remember seeing an article that google was no longer censoring in china, did they go back on that while I wasn't looking?
Re:Hidden censorship (Score:5, Informative)
It's not Google doing the censoring. Apparently China interferes somehow with connections that are caught searching for various terms. Google now highlights certain words and pops up a notice that it has observed these words may break your connection.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
You Have Severely Misplaced Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Hidden censorship is worse than obvious censorship. Shame on Google for hiding China's shame.
I don't understand this logic at all. From the summary:
Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection.
Uh so it looks like Google is calling attention to China's censorship and giving users a nod ahead of time that their search is going to be censored. This is far from "hiding" anything and, conversely, lets the user know about the censorship. The other good thing this does is that if I'm interested in censored terms and my IP hits the great firewall with these censored terms, the government might build a dossier on my entire histories to see what else I'm interested in and have dirt on me if they need it. But if Google is warning me ahead of time, this never hits the firewall and China doesn't get to profile their citizens based on search queries. Google will enable you, if you so choose, to appear to keep your nose clean.
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Include a list of MD5 hashes of forbidden words instead?
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yeah, exactly. they are enabling the corrupt government and helping them play their stupid control games.
sure, they help you avoid the chinese knowing what you are searching for. but you still can't search for it! they say 'no no, you may want to avoid thinking about this or that concept, citizen!'.
this enables the chinese government. it supports it!
if they had any balls, they'd just get out of china entirely. their half-assed 'freedom' is bullshit when they put it thru a sieve. but china means MONEY
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You Have Severely Misplaced Shame (Score:5, Informative)
sure, they help you avoid the chinese knowing what you are searching for. but you still can't search for it!
Why do people run their mouths when they have no idea what they are talking about? As can be plainly seen in this screenshot [blogcdn.com], it is quite clear that you can search for it by simply clicking the "search anyway" link. Google is just being helpful and letting you know that you are probably going to not be able to get much of a response and it is out of their control.
Re:You Have Severely Misplaced Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is not removing results from their search. A user comes along and searches for "Human Rights Abuses in Tibet" for example. If I run the search I get about 4.5 million hits (my lord, 4.5 million hits on that? Anyway...) because i'm in the US.
If I were in china, i'd get a 404 page not found error, or some other weird obsure error page.
Whats happening is someone between me and Google is intercepting the search query, deciding on some filter if what im searching for is appropriate based on some unknown list of "not to be known" subjects, and if my searches dont pass the test I dont get the results back. Peoplere were complaining to Google because it seemed like it was Google's fault.
So Google is now going to turn around and say "Hey, you, user. Yeah you! Just wanna let you know, searching for that has resulted in people not getting results."
So, yeah, way to jump on the "OMG GOOGLE IS EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL AND IM SMART FOR POINTING IT OUT HAHAHAHAHAHA" bandwagon. Your bias is showing.
403 or 404? (Score:2)
If I were in china, i'd get a 404 page not found error
A "403 Forbidden" error would be more informative and more appropriate.
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this enables the chinese government. it supports it!
So by pinpoint someone's mischievousness before it happens, I'm empowering the mischief.
Ok. (tongue in cheek)
I'm dying to read what YOU think it should be done.
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He said it: stop the business in China altogether. That'll show 'em chinese oppressors, they'll suffer! Because chinese overlords really need Google, and it's not like there's any other search engines in China [baidu.com] where people will flock despite it being censored as well.
Oh, I know, if Google's gonna not just talk the talk about not being evil, they should walk the walk, create a mercenary army and overthrow chinese government.
(On a side note, $any_corporation_name + mercenary army capable of overthrowing gover
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Uh so it looks like Google is calling attention to China's censorship and giving users a nod ahead of time that their search is going to be censored.
Except they oh so carefully avoid any mention of the censorship or the cause for the connection breaking, instead implying that the search terms themselves are breaking the connection. They go out of their way to make this seem like a technical glitch rather than what it is, so I'd say they're very much not calling attention to censorship.
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If Google mentioned that it was due to China censoring the internet, China would censor the explanation.
you don't get it (Score:2)
you are blaming google for what china is doing, and you are not giving google any credit for being subtle, perhaps because you are a person who doesn't understand anything subtle
china is going to censor the web. with google or without google
now anyone with an iq over 50 can tell why their connection is breaking: it's not google, it's china being a censor
they didn't carefully avoid anything, they didn't say "china is censoring us" because then china would cut off google
do you understand now?
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I understand perfectly fine, what you've misunderstood is my point. I'm not arguing that Google is doing something wrong here, but that eldavojohn's assertion that Google is calling attention to censorship and all that is false. Google is just trying to provide their users with a better user experience.
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You're being way too literal.
Google is doing the clever thing by using very carefully worded language which makes it abundantly clear what's going on to anybody with any clue at all (and Chinese net users certainly have a clue about this sort of thing), without stating so explicitly.
If they did as you suggest, and explicitly mentioned censorship, they'd immediately get stomped on by the Chinese government.
Re:Hidden censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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How is drawing specific attention to the things that invoke Chinese government censorship supposed to be hiding the censorship?
Re:Hidden censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Google helpfully telling the Chinese people, "Hey, this search term won't work, maybe you should try another *wink wink*". That should make it easier to to bypass China's filters.
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Reminds me of stills during prohibition (Score:5, Interesting)
The manufactures helped out, by giving very explicit instructions on exactly what NOT TO DO, because if you followed all the steps, you'd end up with whiskey. And you wouldn't want to do that.
Highlighting the censorship (Score:5, Informative)
If You read TFA then You will see that this service actually HIGHLIGHTS the censorship process.
IMHO that's doing the right thing.
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Yeah; I miss the old Google, and I'm glad to see a little of it shining through here. This should be encouraged.
Cultural problem. (Score:1)
Until the Chinese public rejects the idea that their exploitation is for the "common good" they'll continue to be a 2nd rate country.
The moment the Chinese realize that they deserve the basic rights granted in western countries they'll become unstoppable. I don't care if they've got a thousands year old culture. It's wrong. Right now they simply don't value their own rights an freedoms and they'll remain oppressed if they don't want to help themselves.
Of course, this also means violent bloody revolution, as
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Just China? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just China? (Score:4, Interesting)
In Germany you often get a little notice at the bottom of the results if something has been filtered because of our censorship laws (mostly fro-teh-children bullshit). It would be nice if it was more obvious and more specific though. At least they link to chillingeffects.org, where you can compare local search results to "global" search results.
Like Clippy? (Score:2)
What week is the river cleanup?
"It looks like you're trying to do one of the following:
I suggest omitting the following words from your search: RIVER, WEEK, CLEANUP. Try 'What is the?' and you are sure to get better results from your query."
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It's actually older than Confucius, including the bit about the state getting to define what is and is not "harmonious." Needless to say, it has been popular with the various rulers of China ever since.
What does the net look like from the PRC? (Score:2)
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I was in China last week, and tried to go to Facebook (which is a blocked site in China). I don't remember the specific error, but it was something along the lines of "server not responding". It didn't tell me it was blocked or chide me for looking or anything like that.
That reminded me that I was behind the great firewall, so I didn't go looking for any other questionable content, and I was unaware of anything else getting blocked/filtered in the time I was there.
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I live and work in China.
The standard Great Firewall error is displayed as "Connection Reset" in Firefox.
There are two (commonly known) sets of blocking. A lengthy list of domains that never work, and content scanning temporary blocks.
The scanning works on both outgoing and incoming traffic, and once triggered for a domain will block that domain in its entirety for a given user/connection for between 5 and 30 minutes.
In essence if you search for something using the key words then you get a connection reset
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It could all backfire (Score:4, Funny)
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Backfire for who? Google isn't the one causing problems with certain searches. And I get the impression it doesn't cause general network interruptions, only Google is blocked.
HTTPS (Score:3)
Automatically redirect to the https version of Google. Problem solved.
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Google bans the english terms also (Score:2, Interesting)
link to test out yourself: https://www.google.com.hk/?esrch=SearchNotices::OptIn&q=%E9%95%BF%E6%B1%9F&hl=en [google.com.hk]
Screenshot of Google banning the term Freedom of Speech: http://image.dude-suit.net/albums/userpics/10002/googlecensor.png [dude-suit.net]
and it's google blocking it, since I'm in the states unlike their blog where they make it sound like it's china blocking before the search gets to them, which is untrue.
China is doing the blocking — not Google (Score:3)
You have no idea what you're talking about.
The search can still be performed, but it is China — NOT Google — that is doing the censoring by interfering with queries which contain offending terms.
Before, if someone in mainland China performed a search containing an offending term, equipment that is part of the so-called "Great Firewall" would interfere with the search, making it appear that the search results page was unavailable or resetting the browser's connection, and then making Google unava
And to add to my comments... (Score:3)
You can still do the search by hitting "Search Anyway". Anywhere other than mainland China, this search will work. Just try it. If you're in mainland China and you elect to search anyway, that will result in your connection being reset and will temporarily break your ability to interact with Google. It is China, not Google, that is doing this.
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and it's google blocking it, since I'm in the states unlike their blog where they make it sound like it's china blocking before the search gets to them, which is untrue.
Uhm, what? Do you even read what you post and do you even read the fine summary? It clearly says "We've observed that searching for [] in mainland China may temporarily break your connection to Google. This interruption is outside Google's control. ... Search anywyas". You can click that "Search anyways" and get your results without any bans, blocks and network timeouts, given you're not in mainland China, where you'd presumably get connection dropped after trying to Search anyways.
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and it's google blocking it, since I'm in the states unlike their blog where they make it sound like it's china blocking before the search gets to them, which is untrue.
How about actually clicking "search anyway" when prompted with the popup? You'd see that it actually searched anyway and turned up the term in question.
Probably because in the US there's no Chinese government sitting between you and the loading of your search results -- unlike in China.
Feedback channels are grrreeaaattt (Score:4, Insightful)
By google providing users with information about what is blocked they are enabled to more rapidly formulate queries which bypass censorship. The change is a win for all but oppressive control.
Google is Double-talkin' (Score:2)
A lot of people are having trouble with this article because Google is having to do very Political things in this case.
Google engineers know for damn sure why the connections are being reset. But if they say that explicitly, the Chinese government will rambunctiously cuddle them. Google has already had troubles in the past with the Chinese government. So, what google has done here is said, "Oh no, there's something out of our control. If you do this search then your connection will be reset."
Note the usage
You can see this yourself (Score:2)
As an example:
Go to http://www.google.com.hk/ [google.com.hk]
and put in
tiananmen square massacre
It'll show those three words in red everywhere on the page.
Revise Query (Score:2)
By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post.
ZOMG the list of censored terms has to be bigger than War and Peace. Here's an idea, throw all of those terms at the great firewall and buffer overflow results (or something like that). Then the Chinese people can see what the nanny state has been hideing from them. Information IS power.
Fuck Google (Score:1)
Google should tell China to go fuck itself. The owners and employees should be ashamed. They should realize that the free and open sharing of information, something they have enabled for years, was itself enabled by societies that value freedom of both the written and spoken word. Now they are just another evil coward corporation that can't stomach the thought of reduced profits even if it means kissing the ass of one of the most free speech repressing countries in the world.