6 ms·

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 no

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.
  - relativ575 5y ago
    Not sure if it's a lie or not, but region specific constraints should be frequent enough to warrant automatic testing?
- marricks 5y ago
  Why oh why are so many people just buying what Microsoft is selling here? For a person give them the benefit of the doubt sure, but this is a feature which isn't turned off and on with a simple switch. Either: 1) Microsoft did this intentionally and want to shift they blame anyway the can (which is bad) or 2) They censor tons many topics and had a whoopsie on this one (even worse??) Unless they give a deep explanation of how this happened quickly I am personally giving them no benefit of the doubt
- hughrr 5y ago
  I doubt it's a lie. The explanation is simply shit enough to cover all possible outcomes. Really internally it's now being pondered by the Corporate Apologetics team at Microsoft which will follow the standard 3 point plan: 1. Quick everyone, explain it away as "human error". 2. All we have to do now is stick our fingers in our ears and hope it stops trending on Twitter and then we're good. 3. Well fuck, that failed so we better make some large marketoid gesture about never doing it again which will consist of hiring someone in the position of "Senior Vice President of Never Getting Caught Doing This Particular Thing Again". Of course the last point will fail miserably in this case as they will of course immediately hire someone who posted something nasty on Twitter several years ago...
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    I think it's certainly a lie. Even if what they mean is "We accidentally censored in more locales than we wanted" they are lying by trying to conceal what happened rather than reveal it with misleading statements. Microsoft is censoring search results at either the explicit or implicit request of China. It's despicable.
    - quietbritishjim 5y ago
      > "We accidentally censored in more locales than we wanted" If that actually did happen to be the reason, then "human error" would be completely accurate. Not even just technically correct, but a reasonable description.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        No, it wouldn't be either. It's an incomplete description that intentionally creates the misleading interpretation that this wasn't intentional censorship but a mistake. In reality, this was intentional censorship, possibly applied in an overly broad way. Saying things to intentionally cause your audience to come to incorrect conclusions is lying. A reasonable description does not omit relevant details. Similar, if I said "My car accident was caused but human error" that would not be a correct or reasonable description if it were actually caused by my driving while drunk. I could as easily say it was caused by physics. The problem is that these lies elide my wrongdoing.
class4behavior 5y ago
Probably because they aren't buying the lazy excuse that coincidentally on the anniversary there was an issue. Another point is that the author is politically outspoken.
alphabet9000 5y ago
Not the first time this has happened and attributed to an "error" 2014: Bing has been filtering out both English and Chinese language search results for politically-sensitive terms such as "Dalai Lama" and "Tiananmen" [0] [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-denies-accusations-of-censorship-on-bing-outside-china/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-denies-accusations-o...
- niea_11 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. I presumed it was a one time thing. As other commenters said, may be it's intentional but the change was supposed to be visible only inside China and then someone messed up and it leaked to search results outside of China. (for example : a bad update to the rule censoring the subject inside china made it visible worldwide) For me, it seems unlikely that they did it on purpose. not because they are good but because no company wants this kind of publicity.
blibble 5y ago
would you expect MS PR to say anything other than that, even if it was deliberate?
- niea_11 5y ago
  As I said in another comment, for me it seems unlikely to be deliberate because of the bad publicity it will generate. I'm not defending Microsoft. It just seemed to me a little bit weird to "punish" them for a one time mistake. But as another commenter showed me, this kind of stuff happened before. Still, I'm finding it hard to believe it was deliberate. Mistakes happen. (maybe I'm naive :))

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.
- relativ575 5y ago
  Not sure if it's a lie or not, but region specific constraints should be frequent enough to warrant automatic testing?
marricks 5y ago
Why oh why are so many people just buying what Microsoft is selling here? For a person give them the benefit of the doubt sure, but this is a feature which isn't turned off and on with a simple switch. Either: 1) Microsoft did this intentionally and want to shift they blame anyway the can (which is bad) or 2) They censor tons many topics and had a whoopsie on this one (even worse??) Unless they give a deep explanation of how this happened quickly I am personally giving them no benefit of the doubt
hughrr 5y ago
I doubt it's a lie. The explanation is simply shit enough to cover all possible outcomes. Really internally it's now being pondered by the Corporate Apologetics team at Microsoft which will follow the standard 3 point plan: 1. Quick everyone, explain it away as "human error". 2. All we have to do now is stick our fingers in our ears and hope it stops trending on Twitter and then we're good. 3. Well fuck, that failed so we better make some large marketoid gesture about never doing it again which will consist of hiring someone in the position of "Senior Vice President of Never Getting Caught Doing This Particular Thing Again". Of course the last point will fail miserably in this case as they will of course immediately hire someone who posted something nasty on Twitter several years ago...
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I think it's certainly a lie. Even if what they mean is "We accidentally censored in more locales than we wanted" they are lying by trying to conceal what happened rather than reveal it with misleading statements. Microsoft is censoring search results at either the explicit or implicit request of China. It's despicable.
  - quietbritishjim 5y ago
    > "We accidentally censored in more locales than we wanted" If that actually did happen to be the reason, then "human error" would be completely accurate. Not even just technically correct, but a reasonable description.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      No, it wouldn't be either. It's an incomplete description that intentionally creates the misleading interpretation that this wasn't intentional censorship but a mistake. In reality, this was intentional censorship, possibly applied in an overly broad way. Saying things to intentionally cause your audience to come to incorrect conclusions is lying. A reasonable description does not omit relevant details. Similar, if I said "My car accident was caused but human error" that would not be a correct or reasonable description if it were actually caused by my driving while drunk. I could as easily say it was caused by physics. The problem is that these lies elide my wrongdoing.

class4behavior 5y ago

Probably because they aren't buying the lazy excuse that coincidentally on the anniversary there was an issue. Another point is that the author is politically outspoken.

alphabet9000 5y ago

Not the first time this has happened and attributed to an "error" 2014: Bing has been filtering out both English and Chinese language search results for politically-sensitive terms such as "Dalai Lama" and "Tiananmen" [0] [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-denies-accusations-of-censorship-on-bing-outside-china/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-denies-accusations-o...

niea_11 5y ago
Thanks for the link. I presumed it was a one time thing. As other commenters said, may be it's intentional but the change was supposed to be visible only inside China and then someone messed up and it leaked to search results outside of China. (for example : a bad update to the rule censoring the subject inside china made it visible worldwide) For me, it seems unlikely that they did it on purpose. not because they are good but because no company wants this kind of publicity.

blibble 5y ago

would you expect MS PR to say anything other than that, even if it was deliberate?

niea_11 5y ago
As I said in another comment, for me it seems unlikely to be deliberate because of the bad publicity it will generate. I'm not defending Microsoft. It just seemed to me a little bit weird to "punish" them for a one time mistake. But as another commenter showed me, this kind of stuff happened before. Still, I'm finding it hard to believe it was deliberate. Mistakes happen. (maybe I'm naive :))