16 ms·

Notepad++ drops Bing after “tank man” censorship

302 points by FridayoLeary 5y ago

jsnell 5y ago
Also discussed earlier today in context of the release notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726
Animats 5y ago
I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I looked. I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that up under Tienanmen Square.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  I've been familiar with "tank man" as a meme specifically in reference to the famous photograph. PBS Frontline ran a great documentary in 2009 on the photo and its subject, titled "The Tank Man": https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I looked. You can just search for tank man to get a picture of it: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/news/b/bing-image/bing-image-search-blocked-tank-man-tiananmen-square-protest_ntw3.3840.jpg https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/news/b/bing-image/bing-image... > I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that up under Tienanmen Square. It may not be the ideal search, but look at how there are no results. Clearly some kind of censorship mechanism triggered.
- sorenKaram 5y ago
  see https://ugolini.co.th/ugolini/microsoft-says-error-caused-tank-man-bing-censorship/ https://ugolini.co.th/ugolini/microsoft-says-error-caused-ta... or https://newsasia.co/microsoft-blames-accidental-human-error-for-tank-man-censorship-on-tiananmen-square-anniversary/ https://newsasia.co/microsoft-blames-accidental-human-error-... this code change is in response to the fact that bing was not serving up results of the tank man image on the image's anniversary. The Tienanmen square protests were protests for freedom, and censoring images does not seem very free.
JoeyBananas 5y ago
This change single-handedly defeated communism
- stOneskull 5y ago
  fingers crossed on the other hand
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Lots of little changes like this add up and get us to a better place than we are currently.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  You're right, we should never do anything, ever, about anything hard, because incrementally makes almost no difference.
  - slver 5y ago
    These empty moves are not even incremental. They're completely irrelevant. He switched to DuckDuckGo which uses mostly Bing results. He hosts on GitHub (Microsoft) and his app runs on Windows (Microsoft). This patch is theater for idiots.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
      Are you willfully ignoring the very public statement of his intent that the article is about? Obviously economic harm is infinitesimal, but reputational harm is more substantial and spreads readily.
- throwawayacc2 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus
sorenKaram 5y ago
Besides Notepad++ making a statement (which I think does matter), their code change will be relatively ineffective, as DuckDuckGo gets lots of results from bing anyways. I see this really as more of a social statement and less as a technical solution.
- adventured 5y ago
  The lack of search engine competition - viable alternatives - remains a rather massive problem in tech. Notepad++ doesn't have much in the way of options, unfortunately.
  - slver 5y ago
    It sure likes to pretend it does. And ask yourself if that isn't worse than doing nothing.
    - computerex 5y ago
      How is doing nothing better than doing something?
      - slver 5y ago
        It creates the illusion of action without the effect of one. Thus it actually dissipates the social energy required for taking actions that do matter. If I can be colorful but accurate, it's basically like masturbation is to procreation. Another example of the same phenomena is the "spreading awareness" trend. Everyone is aware, everyone is also aware that everyone else is aware, but they're stuck on "spreading awareness" because that's the minimum they can do to feel like they're doing something. So in effect "spreading awareness" after some point becomes "spreading complacency". Imagine there's a fire in the house. The fire extinguisher is sitting nearby. We deeply care about not dying in the fire, but we're stuck doing absolutely nothing about it, because our only approach to escalation is to spread awareness of the fire's existence more and more angrily among each other, and never reaching for the fire extinguisher. It's the active version of something called the "bystander effect". If you know what's a deadlock in a database, false action is equivalent to livelock. Locks are not held indefinitely as they are with deadlocks, the database is actively busy taking and releasing locks non-stop. Yet, nothing is happening. Livelock is the system stuck on a loop of fruitless actions that parade as real ones, hence we don't detect our own inaction. Was that comprehensive enough?
guilhas 5y ago
This sounds dumb I have never heard of "tank man", and Tienanmen square is not my first thought And what about google? It is still there after several recent controversial issues
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  Then educate yourself. The tank man photo taken during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre is widely considered one of the most important and iconic images of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
  - kiawe_fire 5y ago
    Not OP, but to be fair, I’m well aware of the Tiananmen Square protests and the man who confronted and blocked the path of the big tank... And yet I’ve not once heard it referred to as “tank man” until this incident with Bing.
    - relativ575 5y ago
      Maybe you're not well aware enough. Tank man has been around for as long as I can remember. It's has been the title of a PBS documentary from 2006: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transcript.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transcr...
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        Let's assume good intent on the part of the parent and grand-grandparent poster. Not everyone is aware of all the issues, and we're all subject to the rule of today's lucky ten thousand. [0] [0] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
_Microft 5y ago
The discussion on the new Notepad++ release already saw some discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726
lupire 5y ago
I don't think a software product that removes features for a momentary political fad is a reliable product.
- echelon 5y ago
  > momentary political fad I don't think the Tiananmen Square democracy protests qualify as a "momentary political fad". Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Uighur, et al. independence/democracy is an important, ongoing issue. A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true for the world.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    > A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true for the world. Only if it works better than Russia. I suspect it takes generations to inculcate a love of free speech and public participation in government
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      The Chinese already participate in local government to some extent, from what I've read.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    A multi party democratic china is a dream in many ways, including its relation to reality.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  Censorship is a "momentary political fad"?
  - guilhas 5y ago
    When Trump was censored from twitter, youtube, facebook... people were very quick to call it private company's freedom
mberning 5y ago
Remember when “developers” tried to update the license on their code to preclude ICE and the US government from using their open source projects due to the “kids in cages” thing? This is much more mild but just as pointless an effort. Do they think google and many other institutions are not bending over backwards for the CCP? Might as well shut the whole project down and quit.
- rhodozelia 5y ago
  Did google not leave China? I think they did the opposite of bend over
MattGaiser 5y ago
And replaced it with DuckDuckGo, which also had it missing. These actions are usually meaningless, but that makes it extra meaningless.
- unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
  I searched the term in DDG when this was on HN previously; the search was not censored on DDG. [edit] I recall it was at the time bing's search was still blank but I don't have a technical explanation for the different results.
  - donohoe 5y ago
    I believe it was - but only because DDG relies on Bing for much of its search
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 Maybe DDG corrected it earlier? But DDG is as affected for many on here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - inigojonesguy 5y ago
    https://archive.is/yemlH https://archive.is/yemlH
- simias 5y ago
  Doesn't DuckDuckGo use Bing's results behind the scenes? At any rate right now I see no obvious censorship: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tank+man&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tank+man&iax=images&ia=imag...
  - adventured 5y ago
    That's because Microsoft got caught censoring the results, then they lied and claimed it was a "human error," which absolutely nobody believes. Then Microsoft manually took an action to restore the image results in Bing for the query "tank man." Which then filtered down to DDG since it relies on Bing (previously DDG's image results were similarly devoid of the proper results).
throwaway20875 5y ago
Thank you Notepad++ for standing against censorship. We need to see more of this.
monksy 5y ago
I'm still not seeing the images of the protest from the search. I'm seeing results about the censure of the image. This is what I'm seeing: https://imgur.com/a/P9l23Di https://imgur.com/a/P9l23Di
orhmeh09 5y ago
If you're looking for the tank man image, here's video of the incident: https://twitter.com/whoiszhu/status/1400950918464561156 https://twitter.com/whoiszhu/status/1400950918464561156 Worth seeing if you've never seen it in motion. Glad he survived.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Has there ever been confirmation of this though? To my knowledge his ID is not known, and there were lots of disappeared students after this.
  - orhmeh09 5y ago
    He was not run over, and this was news to me. There is no evidence either way what may have happened later, but the only ones claiming for sure that he was later executed are U.S. government officials.
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      yeah seems impossible to know. though we do know there was a lot of political disappearing and murdering going on. i don't even know if those 'pancake' photos actually happened PLA has been successful in that regard.
niea_11 5y ago
From the article linked in the commit : Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." It was not intentional and not a result of a request from China, so why ban the search engine? https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-concerns-over-lack-image-results-tiananmen-tank-man-2021-06-04/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-con...
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  > Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." Is there any further explanation? Sounds like an obvious lie.
  - CodesInChaos 5y ago
    My guess is that they tried to censor it in China, but affected everybody by accident.
    - acmj 5y ago
      This would be my guess. MS just can't openly admit they censor in China even though everyone knows this is how they are allowed to operate in China, so they use "human error" as a bad excuse.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It seems an odd thing to lie about. It's so easy to get caught at it, and they seem to have done it very clumsily. And the upside seems so small -- both for China (if they requested it) and for Microsoft (if they were volunteering). It does seem like the kind of thing that could happen in error, albeit an error that would probably produce millions of other problems (such as other missing images). Did that happen and none of the others attracted enough attention? If they said, "Yeah, we patched a bunch of servers, but some data center was temporarily down, they didn't get the patch, and that just happened to be the one having that image," I'd say, "Yeah, that seems reasonable." No idea if it's true, but it sounds enough like other bugs I've committed.
jonas21 5y ago
Ironically, the change replaces Bing queries with DuckDuckGo, which gets its results primarily from Bing, and also showed censored results for "tank man".
- throwaway20875 5y ago
  Not true.
  - jonas21 5y ago
    Why do you claim this is not true? I observed it myself, as did many other HN users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
- vultour 5y ago
  Which means all this crying about “censoring the censorship” is pointless. You now get Bing results + privacy, why are you complaining?
chippy 5y ago
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of Good". However, there is a certain very visible irony in that Microsoft runs both GitHub and Bing.
- slver 5y ago
  It also runs Windows, and Notepad++ is a Windows app.
chapium 5y ago
This can be modified using Settings/Preferences/Search Engine. From there you can use whatever search engine you want. This is a non-issue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cletus 5y ago
I'd love to know the story of this "human error" (that led to tank man being censored on Bing). Like... what were they trying to do? Why do they this capability at all? Was it unauthorized removal from Bing search results? If so, by whom? Why? Try and get the auto-caption on Tiktok to recognize "Tiananmen Square". It sets a really bad precedent to allow or accept Western companies (yes I know Tiktok is Chinese) kowtowing to China in the hopes that those companies will gain access to the Chinese market. It's widely suspect that not having the American flag on the moon landing in the movie "First Man" was to cater to the Chinese market. Let me clue in all the investors and the Western big-tech CEOs on a little secret about China: you, as a Western company, will never "win" in the Chinese market. The CCP will make sure that happens. You are literally wasting your time and debasing yourself for something that will never happen. Take any Western company like Google, Uber or Amazon and the dominant player in China will be some homegrown clone of that. This is not an accident and it will never change. It's time the developed world woke up to this as it is openly mocking WTO rules about equal access to markets.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Tank man is banned in China. Someone at bing probably was told to censor it in China but did it for the entire world instead. I really don't understand this argument that western companies shouldn't operate in China. How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo? China is too politically powerful for anything to be done, especially by activist fortune 500 companies.
  - slumdev 5y ago
    > How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo? It lets the Chinese Communist Party pretend their citizens don't live in a curated bubble designed to reinforce feelings of nationalism and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Some Chinese are allowed to travel abroad. If they discovered a totally different Internet abroad, they might start asking uncomfortable questions back home. Instead, CCP bosses hope that they simply won't notice that the domestic Bing isn't the same as Bing everywhere else.
HardwareLust 5y ago
They should allow us to choose. I'm not jazzed about Notepad++ deciding for me which search engines I'm "allowed" to use. Maybe it's time to switch to Atom instead. At least there it's my choice.
- rosmax_1337 5y ago
  We have all been taught that two wrongs does not make a right. But I was also taught that not standing up to bullies keeps them coming back. More applications should boycott Bing.
- computerex 5y ago
  It’s free and open. You _are_ allowed to choose, and are in no way obligated to use notepad++. Similarly, it’s author is perfectly in the right by omitting bing as an expression of protest against unethical censorship.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    It's also open source so anyone who wants is free to revert the commit and build their own version. edit: Beaten to the punch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428383
- relativ575 5y ago
  I think you should switch if you think this action of Notepad++ doesn't reflect your values. Not a Windows user, but I were I'd be using Notepad++.
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  I’m not expressing an opinion on the matter myself. But I would like to say that the project lead and primary developer of Notepad++ has political opinions, and uses his software as a platform to occasionally exercise them. This appears to be another example of this whether you agree or not with it.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  If you're that adamant about a specific search engine, then you can fork or patch. Notepad++ is open source, so these are both possible options if you feel that strongly about the issue.
xlmnxp 5y ago
Is there anyone use it this days? Microsoft VSCoder better then it by a lot, I dont think they can do something by removing Bing
- sideshowb 5y ago
  I do
- pedroma 5y ago
  Yeah, it feels quicker and lighter to edit small text files. If NP++ didn't exist, I'd still use notepad.exe rather than opening VSCode for these light edits.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  It is my go-to editor, even for Linux dev stuff now that WSL is better integrated with Windows.
kiawe_fire 5y ago
They think that’s bad, wait until someone tells them about Google.
dang 5y ago
The recent relevant threads: Microsoft says error led to no matching Bing images for Tiananmen 'tank man' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400774 - June 2021 (10 comments) “Tank Man” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397486 - June 2021 (54 comments) The story of the Tank Man photo by its photographer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27396783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27396783 - June 2021 (138 comments) There are no results for tank man - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 - June 2021 (529 comments) The iconic ‘Tank Man’ photo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 - June 2021 (4 comments) Tank Man - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394943 - June 2021 (15 comments) Ask HN: “Tank man” image search blocked on Bing and DuckDuckGo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 - June 2021 (126 comments)
relativ575 5y ago
Related, UK embassy to China posted a virtual candle on June 4 to mark the occasion, and was attacked by thousands of message "RIP the Queen" by Weebo's users. I found hilarious that Chinese users, or bots, chose to react that distastefully to something they pretend didn't happen: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/uk-embassy-lights-a-virtual-candle-on-weibo-on-june-4th-gesture-instantly-backfires/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/uk-embassy-lights-a-virtual-can...
emerged 5y ago
I quickly forgot Notepad++ existed after starting to use VScode. This just reminded me to uninstall it. I’m very much against censorship but I’m far more annoyed by “everything is politics”
dbeley 5y ago
Thanks to the Notepad++ maintainer for making free-as-in-free-beer software political. Free software has always been political but judging by the reaction here and on the github commit, its philosophy is becoming less and less vocal.

302 points by FridayoLeary 5y ago

Also discussed earlier today in context of the release notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726

Animats 5y ago

I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I looked. I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that up under Tienanmen Square.

neartheplain 5y ago
I've been familiar with "tank man" as a meme specifically in reference to the famous photograph. PBS Frontline ran a great documentary in 2009 on the photo and its subject, titled "The Tank Man": https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
Dylan16807 5y ago
> I couldn't find the "tank man" censorship problem, and I looked. You can just search for tank man to get a picture of it: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/news/b/bing-image/bing-image-search-blocked-tank-man-tiananmen-square-protest_ntw3.3840.jpg https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/news/b/bing-image/bing-image... > I'd never heard of "tank man" as a meme; I'd have looked that up under Tienanmen Square. It may not be the ideal search, but look at how there are no results. Clearly some kind of censorship mechanism triggered.
sorenKaram 5y ago
see https://ugolini.co.th/ugolini/microsoft-says-error-caused-tank-man-bing-censorship/ https://ugolini.co.th/ugolini/microsoft-says-error-caused-ta... or https://newsasia.co/microsoft-blames-accidental-human-error-for-tank-man-censorship-on-tiananmen-square-anniversary/ https://newsasia.co/microsoft-blames-accidental-human-error-... this code change is in response to the fact that bing was not serving up results of the tank man image on the image's anniversary. The Tienanmen square protests were protests for freedom, and censoring images does not seem very free.

JoeyBananas 5y ago

This change single-handedly defeated communism

stOneskull 5y ago
fingers crossed on the other hand
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Lots of little changes like this add up and get us to a better place than we are currently.
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
You're right, we should never do anything, ever, about anything hard, because incrementally makes almost no difference.
- slver 5y ago
  These empty moves are not even incremental. They're completely irrelevant. He switched to DuckDuckGo which uses mostly Bing results. He hosts on GitHub (Microsoft) and his app runs on Windows (Microsoft). This patch is theater for idiots.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    Are you willfully ignoring the very public statement of his intent that the article is about? Obviously economic harm is infinitesimal, but reputational harm is more substantial and spreads readily.
throwawayacc2 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus

sorenKaram 5y ago

Besides Notepad++ making a statement (which I think does matter), their code change will be relatively ineffective, as DuckDuckGo gets lots of results from bing anyways. I see this really as more of a social statement and less as a technical solution.

adventured 5y ago
The lack of search engine competition - viable alternatives - remains a rather massive problem in tech. Notepad++ doesn't have much in the way of options, unfortunately.
- slver 5y ago
  It sure likes to pretend it does. And ask yourself if that isn't worse than doing nothing.
  - computerex 5y ago
    How is doing nothing better than doing something?
    - slver 5y ago
      It creates the illusion of action without the effect of one. Thus it actually dissipates the social energy required for taking actions that do matter. If I can be colorful but accurate, it's basically like masturbation is to procreation. Another example of the same phenomena is the "spreading awareness" trend. Everyone is aware, everyone is also aware that everyone else is aware, but they're stuck on "spreading awareness" because that's the minimum they can do to feel like they're doing something. So in effect "spreading awareness" after some point becomes "spreading complacency". Imagine there's a fire in the house. The fire extinguisher is sitting nearby. We deeply care about not dying in the fire, but we're stuck doing absolutely nothing about it, because our only approach to escalation is to spread awareness of the fire's existence more and more angrily among each other, and never reaching for the fire extinguisher. It's the active version of something called the "bystander effect". If you know what's a deadlock in a database, false action is equivalent to livelock. Locks are not held indefinitely as they are with deadlocks, the database is actively busy taking and releasing locks non-stop. Yet, nothing is happening. Livelock is the system stuck on a loop of fruitless actions that parade as real ones, hence we don't detect our own inaction. Was that comprehensive enough?

guilhas 5y ago

This sounds dumb I have never heard of "tank man", and Tienanmen square is not my first thought And what about google? It is still there after several recent controversial issues

dudeinjapan 5y ago
Then educate yourself. The tank man photo taken during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre is widely considered one of the most important and iconic images of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
- kiawe_fire 5y ago
  Not OP, but to be fair, I’m well aware of the Tiananmen Square protests and the man who confronted and blocked the path of the big tank... And yet I’ve not once heard it referred to as “tank man” until this incident with Bing.
  - relativ575 5y ago
    Maybe you're not well aware enough. Tank man has been around for as long as I can remember. It's has been the title of a PBS documentary from 2006: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transcript.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transcr...
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Let's assume good intent on the part of the parent and grand-grandparent poster. Not everyone is aware of all the issues, and we're all subject to the rule of today's lucky ten thousand. [0] [0] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

_Microft 5y ago

The discussion on the new Notepad++ release already saw some discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420726

lupire 5y ago

I don't think a software product that removes features for a momentary political fad is a reliable product.

echelon 5y ago
> momentary political fad I don't think the Tiananmen Square democracy protests qualify as a "momentary political fad". Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Uighur, et al. independence/democracy is an important, ongoing issue. A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true for the world.
- FredPret 5y ago
  > A multi-party, democratic China would be dream come true for the world. Only if it works better than Russia. I suspect it takes generations to inculcate a love of free speech and public participation in government
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    The Chinese already participate in local government to some extent, from what I've read.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  A multi party democratic china is a dream in many ways, including its relation to reality.
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
Censorship is a "momentary political fad"?
- guilhas 5y ago
  When Trump was censored from twitter, youtube, facebook... people were very quick to call it private company's freedom

mberning 5y ago

Remember when “developers” tried to update the license on their code to preclude ICE and the US government from using their open source projects due to the “kids in cages” thing? This is much more mild but just as pointless an effort. Do they think google and many other institutions are not bending over backwards for the CCP? Might as well shut the whole project down and quit.

rhodozelia 5y ago
Did google not leave China? I think they did the opposite of bend over

MattGaiser 5y ago

And replaced it with DuckDuckGo, which also had it missing. These actions are usually meaningless, but that makes it extra meaningless.

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
I searched the term in DDG when this was on HN previously; the search was not censored on DDG. [edit] I recall it was at the time bing's search was still blank but I don't have a technical explanation for the different results.
- donohoe 5y ago
  I believe it was - but only because DDG relies on Bing for much of its search
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 Maybe DDG corrected it earlier? But DDG is as affected for many on here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- inigojonesguy 5y ago
  https://archive.is/yemlH https://archive.is/yemlH
simias 5y ago
Doesn't DuckDuckGo use Bing's results behind the scenes? At any rate right now I see no obvious censorship: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tank+man&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tank+man&iax=images&ia=imag...
- adventured 5y ago
  That's because Microsoft got caught censoring the results, then they lied and claimed it was a "human error," which absolutely nobody believes. Then Microsoft manually took an action to restore the image results in Bing for the query "tank man." Which then filtered down to DDG since it relies on Bing (previously DDG's image results were similarly devoid of the proper results).

throwaway20875 5y ago

Thank you Notepad++ for standing against censorship. We need to see more of this.

monksy 5y ago

I'm still not seeing the images of the protest from the search. I'm seeing results about the censure of the image. This is what I'm seeing: https://imgur.com/a/P9l23Di https://imgur.com/a/P9l23Di

orhmeh09 5y ago

If you're looking for the tank man image, here's video of the incident: https://twitter.com/whoiszhu/status/1400950918464561156 https://twitter.com/whoiszhu/status/1400950918464561156 Worth seeing if you've never seen it in motion. Glad he survived.

dillondoyle 5y ago
Has there ever been confirmation of this though? To my knowledge his ID is not known, and there were lots of disappeared students after this.
- orhmeh09 5y ago
  He was not run over, and this was news to me. There is no evidence either way what may have happened later, but the only ones claiming for sure that he was later executed are U.S. government officials.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    yeah seems impossible to know. though we do know there was a lot of political disappearing and murdering going on. i don't even know if those 'pancake' photos actually happened PLA has been successful in that regard.

niea_11 5y ago

From the article linked in the commit : Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." It was not intentional and not a result of a request from China, so why ban the search engine? https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-concerns-over-lack-image-results-tiananmen-tank-man-2021-06-04/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-con...

tehwebguy 5y ago
> Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." Is there any further explanation? Sounds like an obvious lie.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  My guess is that they tried to censor it in China, but affected everybody by accident.
  - acmj 5y ago
    This would be my guess. MS just can't openly admit they censor in China even though everyone knows this is how they are allowed to operate in China, so they use "human error" as a bad excuse.
- jfengel 5y ago
  It seems an odd thing to lie about. It's so easy to get caught at it, and they seem to have done it very clumsily. And the upside seems so small -- both for China (if they requested it) and for Microsoft (if they were volunteering). It does seem like the kind of thing that could happen in error, albeit an error that would probably produce millions of other problems (such as other missing images). Did that happen and none of the others attracted enough attention? If they said, "Yeah, we patched a bunch of servers, but some data center was temporarily down, they didn't get the patch, and that just happened to be the one having that image," I'd say, "Yeah, that seems reasonable." No idea if it's true, but it sounds enough like other bugs I've committed.

jonas21 5y ago

Ironically, the change replaces Bing queries with DuckDuckGo, which gets its results primarily from Bing, and also showed censored results for "tank man".

throwaway20875 5y ago
Not true.
- jonas21 5y ago
  Why do you claim this is not true? I observed it myself, as did many other HN users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
vultour 5y ago
Which means all this crying about “censoring the censorship” is pointless. You now get Bing results + privacy, why are you complaining?

chippy 5y ago

"Don't let perfect be the enemy of Good". However, there is a certain very visible irony in that Microsoft runs both GitHub and Bing.

slver 5y ago
It also runs Windows, and Notepad++ is a Windows app.

chapium 5y ago

This can be modified using Settings/Preferences/Search Engine. From there you can use whatever search engine you want. This is a non-issue.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cletus 5y ago

I'd love to know the story of this "human error" (that led to tank man being censored on Bing). Like... what were they trying to do? Why do they this capability at all? Was it unauthorized removal from Bing search results? If so, by whom? Why? Try and get the auto-caption on Tiktok to recognize "Tiananmen Square". It sets a really bad precedent to allow or accept Western companies (yes I know Tiktok is Chinese) kowtowing to China in the hopes that those companies will gain access to the Chinese market. It's widely suspect that not having the American flag on the moon landing in the movie "First Man" was to cater to the Chinese market. Let me clue in all the investors and the Western big-tech CEOs on a little secret about China: you, as a Western company, will never "win" in the Chinese market. The CCP will make sure that happens. You are literally wasting your time and debasing yourself for something that will never happen. Take any Western company like Google, Uber or Amazon and the dominant player in China will be some homegrown clone of that. This is not an accident and it will never change. It's time the developed world woke up to this as it is openly mocking WTO rules about equal access to markets.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Tank man is banned in China. Someone at bing probably was told to censor it in China but did it for the entire world instead. I really don't understand this argument that western companies shouldn't operate in China. How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo? China is too politically powerful for anything to be done, especially by activist fortune 500 companies.
- slumdev 5y ago
  > How is not censoring and being banned any more productive than the status quo? It lets the Chinese Communist Party pretend their citizens don't live in a curated bubble designed to reinforce feelings of nationalism and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Some Chinese are allowed to travel abroad. If they discovered a totally different Internet abroad, they might start asking uncomfortable questions back home. Instead, CCP bosses hope that they simply won't notice that the domestic Bing isn't the same as Bing everywhere else.

HardwareLust 5y ago

They should allow us to choose. I'm not jazzed about Notepad++ deciding for me which search engines I'm "allowed" to use. Maybe it's time to switch to Atom instead. At least there it's my choice.

rosmax_1337 5y ago
We have all been taught that two wrongs does not make a right. But I was also taught that not standing up to bullies keeps them coming back. More applications should boycott Bing.
computerex 5y ago
It’s free and open. You _are_ allowed to choose, and are in no way obligated to use notepad++. Similarly, it’s author is perfectly in the right by omitting bing as an expression of protest against unethical censorship.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  It's also open source so anyone who wants is free to revert the commit and build their own version. edit: Beaten to the punch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428383
relativ575 5y ago
I think you should switch if you think this action of Notepad++ doesn't reflect your values. Not a Windows user, but I were I'd be using Notepad++.
Tsiklon 5y ago
I’m not expressing an opinion on the matter myself. But I would like to say that the project lead and primary developer of Notepad++ has political opinions, and uses his software as a platform to occasionally exercise them. This appears to be another example of this whether you agree or not with it.
selfhoster11 5y ago
If you're that adamant about a specific search engine, then you can fork or patch. Notepad++ is open source, so these are both possible options if you feel that strongly about the issue.

xlmnxp 5y ago

Is there anyone use it this days? Microsoft VSCoder better then it by a lot, I dont think they can do something by removing Bing

sideshowb 5y ago
I do
pedroma 5y ago
Yeah, it feels quicker and lighter to edit small text files. If NP++ didn't exist, I'd still use notepad.exe rather than opening VSCode for these light edits.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
It is my go-to editor, even for Linux dev stuff now that WSL is better integrated with Windows.

kiawe_fire 5y ago

They think that’s bad, wait until someone tells them about Google.

dang 5y ago

The recent relevant threads: Microsoft says error led to no matching Bing images for Tiananmen 'tank man' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400774 - June 2021 (10 comments) “Tank Man” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397486 - June 2021 (54 comments) The story of the Tank Man photo by its photographer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27396783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27396783 - June 2021 (138 comments) There are no results for tank man - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 - June 2021 (529 comments) The iconic ‘Tank Man’ photo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 - June 2021 (4 comments) Tank Man - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394943 - June 2021 (15 comments) Ask HN: “Tank man” image search blocked on Bing and DuckDuckGo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 - June 2021 (126 comments)

relativ575 5y ago

Related, UK embassy to China posted a virtual candle on June 4 to mark the occasion, and was attacked by thousands of message "RIP the Queen" by Weebo's users. I found hilarious that Chinese users, or bots, chose to react that distastefully to something they pretend didn't happen: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/uk-embassy-lights-a-virtual-candle-on-weibo-on-june-4th-gesture-instantly-backfires/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/uk-embassy-lights-a-virtual-can...

emerged 5y ago

I quickly forgot Notepad++ existed after starting to use VScode. This just reminded me to uninstall it. I’m very much against censorship but I’m far more annoyed by “everything is politics”

dbeley 5y ago

Thanks to the Notepad++ maintainer for making free-as-in-free-beer software political. Free software has always been political but judging by the reaction here and on the github commit, its philosophy is becoming less and less vocal.