4 ms·

> 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

> 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.

> 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.