We ran our own Microsoft Bing censorship test. This is what we found.

Last week Greatfire.org, a website that tracks web censorship in China, issued a report claiming that Microsoft Bing was deliberately censoring its Chinese-language search results abroad.

The report generated a wave of media attention. Microsoft issued a statement denying the accusations, adding that signs of censorship should be attributed to technical glitches. Greatfire fought back with two additional pieces.

In an effort gauge the validity of Greatfire.org’s claims, TIA searched ten controversial keywords using Bing’s China version, Bing’s Taiwan version, and Bing’s US version. We also toggled between simplified and traditional Chinese characters (the former are used in mainland China, the latter are used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) because we were curious to see if different character inputs would yield different results.

Before we proceed, we’ll note that it’s difficult to make decisive claims over Bing’s censorship without knowing detailed specifics about the following: Bing’s algorithm within China, how it differs from its international algorithms; and how those algorithms differ from Baidu and Google’s algorithms – AND, how those algorithms interact with the search engines’ censorship mechanisms. Indeed, this gets knotty quite quickly.

For the sake of clarity, we’re going to use some special vocabulary. Hits that direct users towards content that would ordinarily be accessible in China will be described as “harmonious.” Hits that direct users towards content that would be blocked in China will be described as “unharmonious.”

Here’s our thesis in a nutshell: Search results for controversial keywords in simplified Chinese on the US bing servers generate lots of harmonious results. But that doesn’t mean Bing is censoring its search results outside China.

We searched ten key terms and discovered a mixed bag of results. But we’re going to focus on two key search terms here that other media organizations haven’t looked at (to our knowledge). The findings here capture the essence of results for other terms.

Chen Guangcheng, the exiled human rights lawyer

From mainland China, all searches for Chen Guangcheng direct users towards harmonious content – primarily news articles that take a critical view (or condescendingly sympathetic) of Chen’s work.

From Taiwan, simplified Chinese searches for Chen Guangcheng on Bing yield the following results:

• Simplified chinese Wikipedia page for Chen Guangcheng (blocked in the mainland; unharmonious)
• Baike (Baidu’s wiki) entry for Chen Guangcheng (harmonious)
• Links to videos of mainland broadcast news reports on Chen (some from Youku, some from Youtube, which is blocked in China, but all likely harmonious since they’re from mainland media)
• Link to Chinese-language Financial Times piece (not necessarily harmonious)

Okay, not bad. We get some harmonious results (Wikipedia and FT), and some unharmonious results (state media reports). Christian Bale isn’t showing up, but there’s no need to cry censorship just yet.

Meanwhile, a search for Chen Guangcheng in traditional Chinese yields the following results:

• Two hits from Taiwan’s Wikipedia (unharmonious),
• Various news articles from Taiwan news outlets, including pro-DPP paper Liberty Times (also unharmonious).
• Curiously, a notice at the bottom of the results page reads “some search results have been removed.”

Taiwan’s pro-independence political party

Conclusion