Microsoft’s Bing search engine is reportedly censoring content in Communist China to hide the government’s genocide against the Uyghurs.
The New York Post reported on Feb. 8 that it had reviewed Bing image search results for “Uyghur” in both China and America. American users received images on Bing reflecting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mass detention, oppression and abuse of the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang province. But this isn’t what Chinese citizens are seeing. In an apparent kowtow to the Beijing government, Bing image results for “Uyghur” or “Uighur” in China instead depict celebrations and dancing, according to the Post.
The Post provided screenshots of the “cheerful Uyghurs smiling and dancing” in what appear to be Bing search results in China tailored specifically to shield the CCP. The outlet also provided screenshots of the more honest search results in America, which highlight the CCP’s genocidal policies in Xinjiang, including the mass detention of over a million Uyghur Muslims, in addition to torture and sexual abuse. The U.S. State Department labeled these policies genocidal, as reported by the Post. The CCP has denied its human rights abuses, claiming the accusations are merely anti-China rhetoric.
Uyghur Human Rights Project’s Louisa Coan Greve, Director of Global Advocacy, told the Post that the CCP “commodified” Uyghur culture while imprisoning the very musicians and poets it pretends to celebrate in concentration camps. “The CCP playbook to get away with atrocities was first to hide, and then deny, and then justify the brutality as ‘re-education.’ Now Microsoft is helping with the next step,” Greve argued.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has long been enamored of the CCP, even meeting Chinese dictator Xi Jinping for one-on-one talks last year, the Post reported. “Results from a search in the US for ‘Uighurs’ show links to news stories which mention ‘oppression’ and ‘suffering,’ and images of Uyghurs wearing masks in the sky blue of the ethnic group’s flag in protest at the Chinese government,” the Post explained. But, the outlet added, “results using a Chinese VPN to mirror domestic Chinese results show images of Uyghur people singing and dancing.”
Bing, in effect, is projecting two different realities for the sake of genuflecting to its Beijing overlords. After all, Microsoft makes no bones about its deep connections with the Communist state. Gates established Microsoft in China over two decades ago, and the company brags that it expanded so that its “most complete subsidiary and largest R&D center outside the United States is in China.” The Post referred to Microsoft as “the world’s most valuable company.”
A Microsoft spokesperson tried his hand at gaslighting by claiming that the differing results in America and China “may vary due to a variety of factors including the language used.” Thus searches on Bing in different languages can return different results, the spokesperson spun the Post’s discovery. The Post noted that Microsoft has previously been caught pandering to the CCP, including not displaying Tiananmen Square images in 2021.
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