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Ask HN: “Tank man” image search blocked on Bing and DuckDuckGo
If you google “tank man” and click on images in Bing and DDG either nothing shows up (Bing) or unrelated photos shows up (DDG). Images show up in Google.
What does HN make of this? I would think that Bing/DDG would have separate search results in China so I’m quite surprised to see this happening outside of China.
- alok-g 5y ago>> If you google “tank man” and click on images in Bing and DDG Use of the word 'google' here for searching is odd and could have been avoided.
- officialjunk 5y agoi am getting google results outside of china for that search term. first result is the wikipedia article with that same title. and many image results as well.
- misterpigs 5y agoDDG: image searching "tank man": "blocked by safe search" and then "sorry no results here" when disabling safe search entirely
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zatertip 5y ago"tank man china" gets me the expected results on DDG
- jjulius 5y agoBut no images on Bing for the same query.
- Multicomp 5y agoDidn't work for me, though it does link to the wikipedia article as the first link.
- iso1631 5y agoInteresting, the first 4 results are pictures of tanks, which ddg is currently (for me) showing for an image search for "tank man" The 5th result is a picture of Chinese police on segways in modernish day Tianamen square "China still gets annoyed with images showing the famous ...markets.businessinsider.com" but that doesn't show up on "tank man" alone. The actual famous image is result 10 and 11 (slight difference, 10 has 4 tanks, 11 taken from a different angle and presumably a little earlier has 3)
- maedla 5y agodumb algorithm can't figure out the context of "Tank man"
- the_only_law 5y agoI’d expect it to bring up something though, given that search engines can pull a ton of irrelevant content farm crap at the least for some of the most specific searches I’ve done.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThere is no legitimate explaination for why there is no infinite scroll of for example, water tanks.
- itsyaboi 5y agoTested this on Bing/DuckDuckGo/Google/Yandex/Baidu. Only failed to show up on Baidu.
- Animats 5y agoEven Baidu, for "Tienanmen Square protest", returns one relevant result: http://edu.sina.com.cn/en/2006-01-24/185435649.html http://edu.sina.com.cn/en/2006-01-24/185435649.html
- itsyaboi 5y agoI only tried "tank man".
- iso1631 5y agoOn images? DDG returns the wikipedia page (and the image in the summary), but in images it's a different story
- itsyaboi 5y agoNo, just web.
- Multicomp 5y agoI confirm the symptoms happened for me as well. I used the !s bang to have startpage search it and startpage returned the image in the carousel and image results. I'm not certain I can continue to use duck duck go if it is going to give me results subjected to CCP censorship. I switched to it from Startpage as it had a less shady reputation than the latter, but Startpage hasn't messed with my actual searches like DDG now has though.
- jjulius 5y agoDoesn't DDG use Bing on the backend (at least to some extent? Forgive my ignorance here). My hunch is that it has more to do with that, as opposed to it being a conscious decision by people at DDG.
- astrea 5y agoThey do bulk purchase search results from Bing.
- Multicomp 5y agoAgreed. But if Bing is going to pull stuff like this, and DDG just wraps Bing results, it can leave users with questions about what else may be being censored, directly or not.
- jjulius 5y agoThat's fair!
- DaedPsyker 5y ago‘Tank man China’ returns the image on DDG as does bing (Although not the first result). I think you are correct that this could be on Microsoft. DDG should seriously consider the provider if there is going to be political censorship from their sources.
- xvector 5y agoAbhorrent behavior by Bing. Hopefully a provider issue on DDG’s end.
- dbtc 5y ago"We all live in America" -Rammstein, 2004 "..." -..., 2021
- srmarm 5y agoDoes surprise me to be honest, of course the CCP no doubt does exert power over companies that want to work in China and this can influence behaviour outside the country too. But surprised to see this so blatant and really quite clumsily too as easy to find in other contexts without difficulty.
- jagger27 5y agoWeird. I’m seeing this in Canada too. I see the Wikipedia article too but no images show up on the image search.
- tyingq 5y agoI get the image if I'm more specific on DDG, via "tank man tiananmen square". Maybe just DDG needing more context than Google?
- aj3 5y agonah, it has results for "tank men", so absence of results altogether is definitely censorship
- kevincox 5y agoIn general a less specific query should return more results. It seems like Bing is explicitly blocking that search.
- twobitshifter 5y agoI don’t think so, the substring should match right? Something funny is happening Search for tank man - 4 images Search for tank man China - many images including the one we expect as the first result Search for tank man again - Images blocked by safe search. The same search gave me different results!
- rapnie 5y agoThis query gave me 2 results, but others had random images (e.g. a happy seal), and in other places I see a white 'no preview available' icon, for instance on the Amnesty page that contains the image.
- kstrauser 5y agoI searched for “fnord cakewalk” and got a pageful of results. It’s impossible that 2 generic words like “tank” and “man” give 0 results whatsoever for organic reasons.
- gdw2 5y ago"tank woman" and "tank guy" returns lots of results.
- xenocratus 5y ago
- swiley 5y agoThat's incredibly disappointing. :(
- Animats 5y agoBing, not logged in, gave me the Wikipedia entry and an article about the photographer, 30 years later.
- partiallypro 5y agoIt does for web results, click on "images" and it shows nothing.
- Animats 5y agoTry image search for tank man tiananmen square "Tank man" alone is not specific enough for image search. It's probably found in main search only because Wikipedia uses that phrase.
- partiallypro 5y agoRight, but it show no results at all. It is clearly not an algorithmic choice, someone has manually made the query return nothing. When I search other variations it simply gives me completely irrelevant images, such as images from the square in modern times. I am an unabashed Microsoft fan, but this is abhorrent. I really hope they put out a statement and correct this. To me it would be like searching for "holocaust" or "Emmett Till" and getting no results.
- partiallypro 5y agoThis is interesting. On the web results it shows up, but under images it doesn't show anything.
- kstrauser 5y agoThat’s very odd. In DDG, searching for “tank man” with “Safe search: moderate” returns 4 pictures of men in or next to tanks. Setting “Safe search: off” returns 0 pictures, not even the 4 utterly safe images from the “moderate” search.
- iso1631 5y agoIt did when I searched 5 minutes ago. Now I get no results and "Images blocked by safe search" on strict/moderate, and no results on "off".
- mvolfik 5y agofor me it works such that if I search for text results and switch to images, the 4 are shown. But they disappear afer any refresh of the page, no matter safe search settings
- sct202 5y agoBing is usually allowed in China past the Great Firewall so it's not too surprising that it's censoring. I think this is what people were afraid of happening with Googles project to reenter the Chinese search market if some of the censorship rules would leak back into the US by accident.
- hef19898 5y agoThat is what I am worried about. That our capitalist society is easily subverted by money, either directly or indirectly, by totalitarian regimes. You see that with sports leagues and movie studios bowing to China, and especially by soccer bowing to Arabian countries. That leads to content bordering propaganda and self-censorship of entities in democratic countries for the sake of a quick dime.
- sireat 5y agoI can confirm that in Eastern Europe Bing and DDG image bring nothing on 'tank man'. However 'tank man' brings the relevant wikipedia as the top result in regular search. So Bing and by extension DDG must have forgotten to turn off their CCP flag globally. At least that's my somewhat charitable interpretation. I am guessing DDG is piggy backing off Bing and therein lies the problem.
- scop 5y agoI can confirm this, using DDG in USA. What the hell?
- scop 5y agoThis thread is now flagged. What the hell?
- thatsnotmepls 5y agoWhat does it mean when a thread is flagged?
- grzm 5y ago> "What does [flagged] mean?" > "It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on Hacker News." > "Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- kgwxd 5y agoOdd, just 5 unrelated pictures on DDG. I thought maybe safe search might have something to do with it but with that off I get 0 results.
- aksss 5y agoCan confirm, tank man with or without quotes yields zero results under images with safe search off. That’s nuts.
- xvector 5y agoHow can we get DDG removed from https://www.privacytools.io/providers/search-engines/ https://www.privacytools.io/providers/search-engines/?
- pronik 5y agoHow is this issue about privacy?
- vinhant 5y agoSame here. "tank man" image search in Bing returns absolutely no result. However "tank man tiananmen square" returns images but half of them with no image of a tank.
- iso1631 5y agoWhy has this been flagged?!
- ct0 5y agovery very odd....
- jeroenhd 5y agoI'm quite disappointed in Microsoft with their blatant submission to the CCP. I hope DDG switches search providers, because this is simply unacceptable behavior.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoNow try the search (without quotes)’img src’ on DDG images vs Yahoo images and ask yourself what’s up with that.
- ct0 5y agoJust switch default search to start page: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/199/0/how-do-i-add-startpage-to-firefox-as-a-default-search-engine https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...
- Dig1t 5y agoWhy is this flagged!?
- liquid153 5y agoCcp flagged this thread lol
- scandox 5y agoThis definitely should not be flagged.
- toomanyrichies 5y agoThis shouldn't have been flagged. My understanding is that posts which comment on current events from a tech perspective are 100% within the bounds of acceptable behavior here.
- Dig1t 5y agoThey totally are, threads discussing such things make it to the top of the front page _all_ the time. It's very suspect that this thread is flagged.
- lettergram 5y agoEverything "controversial" or anti-narrative since October 2020 I've posted has been flagged. Frankly, I think it's mostly bots or people being paid to do so. IMO HN should be changing it's flag policy.
- dang 5y agoThis isn't remotely close to true. I think you may be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias, which unfortunately leads to false feelings of generality. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20false%20feelings%20of%20generality&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- lettergram 5y agoThat’s fair, could also be the topics im weighing in on are more prone. From personal experience, I’m experiencing flags like I’ve never seen before. I have several IRL fiends who no longer post or visit HN because of it (because reasonable discussion is being disappeared). I’d be curious to know the attrition rate after flags. Also if the number of flags for long term members have increased. The data’s all public (I think), so I can do the analysis. But I find it interesting.
- frakkingcylons 5y agoThe Wikipedia article about tank man is the very first result on DDG, and that article has the iconic photo. If they were trying to censor this, wouldn’t they hide those search results? I don’t get the fuss.
- naeq 5y agoQwant.com also does not show any tank man images.
- partiallypro 5y agoWhy is this flagged, and why did it disappear from the front page? I've also noticed that people questioning why this has been flagged are being downvoted. Pretty suspicious given today is the anniversary of the massacre.
- scandox 5y agoAdded this to my favourites just so I remember it did exist
- Dig1t 5y agoI have no idea how to get Dang's attention, but can we talk about why this thread is flagged? How is this not blatant censorship? Tons of people are NOT seeing this thread, it was on the front page before it got flagged, obviously the intention of whoever flagged it.
- xvector 5y agoHopefully Dang can sticky this for a bit to make up for the lost time.
- bob1029 5y agoI've sent an email (as suggested in prior threads) regarding the flagging of this article. I am sure other users have as well. Hopefully someone makes a comment here soon.
- iso1631 5y agoThe thread could have been flagged because 50 people clicks "flag" in the first few minutes. Dang was working 12 hours ago, he's likely off at the moment.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere are other moderators, though dang remains the public face.
- dang 5y agoIf you were to read the site guidelines, you would have a clear idea of how to get my attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mazlix 5y ago@dang I just read the guidelines and don’t see any mention of how to get your/a mods attention in posts unless you’re referring to “email hn@ycombinator.com”? Is that the proper way?
- xnx 5y agoRemember that DuckDuckGo is a thin facade over Bing results.
- officialjunk 5y agotry "tiananmen tank" works on bing
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThe point is not to find the image somehow. The point is to explain why it does not show up where it obviously should, and even more unbelievably, why no images at all show up for such a generic pair of words. There should at least be an infinite scroll of other images men and water tanks etc. This exposes that the cause is not natural or innocent.
- Kim_Bruning 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 this was marked as dupe also, even though it wasn't ?
- asquabventured 5y ago@dang This should not be flagged! This is important history that should never be allowed to be forgotten
- superdude12 5y agoThis post should not be flagged!
- DaedPsyker 5y agoThere is an inevitability of multinationals in bowing to censorship. Many see cracking the Chinese market as the white whale. Censorship costs a drop in the bucket compared to the profits that can be made, they’ll fight tooth and nail on taxes and general business regulation but won’t give a damn for censorship. Quite frankly I doubt even western outrage would matter, in 5 minutes everyone has already moved onto the next story.
- systemvoltage 5y agoStep 1 is bringing awareness. If HN censors this, we’re nipping it in the bud.
- MaxHoppersGhost 5y agoAnyone know how to raise awareness for this issue? I’ve shared this friends/family but would be great to get the press/talking heads on this. Maybe the majority of Americans don’t care and this isn’t something that would gain traction but I sure do care a lot.
- drocer88 5y agoWhich flag?
- thehoomanist 5y agoWhy is a real, tech ethical issue flagged? @dang, any insights on this?
- Dig1t 5y ago@dang why is this flagged!?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SecurityMinded 5y agochina-men are at their best again, tying to manipulate news that doesn't please their communist overlords. And you are wondering how these posts get flagged. In their little world, this post flagging down makes them a small scale hero. They have very little going on for them under the oppressive regime they are serving. If the flaggers' IP addresses could be traced through many veils of VPN connections they are using, I am sure one will end up with a IP address registered to the chinese communist party.
- kokanator 5y agoThis should make every pause for a moment.... seriously. Global censorship of very real events where citizens were standing up for freedom.
- 0xbadc0de5 5y agoThank you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- toomanyrichies 5y agoFYI there is another similar (and unflagged) story currently on the front-page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635
- iso1631 5y agoI'm surprised this story wasn't unflagged to be honest Plenty of people still on this page and downvoting. Irony is had they not flagged this ask-hn in the first place it would likely have gone quiet instead of Streislanding all over the place.
- bookyue 5y agoguys, is it real? I tried to search the "tank man" word in Bing. I can turn off the security search. And I can get the exact tank man image. My IP is Hong Kong, so what happened here?