Microsoft censors democracy (again).


Blog content is getting censored
Remember when I told you that Microsoft's China web portal censored words like "freedom" and "democracy?"

Guess what.

It gets worse.

Now, It is VERY important to note that the inaccessible blog was moved or removed at the server level and that the blog remains inaccessible from the United States as well as from China. This means that the action was taken NOT by Chinese authorities responsible for filtering and censoring the internet for Chinese viewers, but by MSN staff at the level of the MSN servers.

I did similar tests with five other Chinese blog-hosting services. They all work differently when it comes to censoring user content, but they all engage in some form of filtering or censorship of user content. Interestingly, I found that Bokee had no mechanism preventing me from posting anything in the titles or text bodies of the posts. But eventually, blogs with politically sensitive words in them (like “Falun Gong,” “Tiananmen massacre” and “Tibet independence”) were taken down in what appeared to be a human screening process, perhaps assisted by some kind of keyword search or alert system. Other blog hosting services use a combination of automated systems and human procedures similar to MSN’s, although MSN was definitely #1 when it came to full takedown response time. At least one of the services allows you to post anything, but replaces politically sensitive words with “****” when they appear. I have decided not to go into a detailed naming of names and specifics about who censors more strictly and who censors more loosely than whom, since that will only result in some people getting in trouble – or as the Bokee editorial against MSN shows, some blog-hosting companies trying to curry favor with the authorities may try to sic the goons on those who take a lighter-handed approach to, er, user content management…

Can we say, snakepit?  It’s actually not uncommon in China for people in one company to actively “tattle” on their rivals and get them into political trouble in order to gain a competitive business advantage. I saw it happen several times in the media and entertainment worlds when I was living and working in Beijing.  This is one reason the communist party will stick around longer than many outsiders think. Businesses get greedy and try to manipulate the authoritarian system to their advantage, rather than working together to make the whole thing more fair, accountable, and transparent. Microsoft clearly isn’t taking the high road either.

First of course, I am going to say that MSN and Microsoft are private entities providing a mostly free service, and they are certainly within their rights to set conditions.

However, the fact that this was taken down in the US does not give me great confidence in Microsoft. At this point it seems to be confined to Chinese characters, but will MSN start censoring other things that China doesn't like?

Hat tip to Brain Terminal.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 5, 2006 at 05:11 AM  Tag


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