There are no results for tank man • Hacker News Board

Re: There are no results for tank man

#361

Post by sdenton4 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #86

kian wrote: post #45

@dang, I think we need an explanation for why Tank Man-related content on Hacker News has been disappearing all day. I usually trust HN to be a bastion of free speech, and if there isn't some kind of proportionate response here, I don't believe myself or many others here will be able to see it that way going forward. EDIT: Thank you for your response, dang. Hacker News is a special place, which is why we have respond…

HN is not a bastion of free speech and it is not meant to be. Controversial topics are routinely flagged because they incite flame wars and downvoting because you disagree is considered acceptable. However, in this particular case, I don't think it should be flagged unless the comment sections becomes unmanageable. It may be a political topic but it is seen from a technical angle, and indeed, a lot of the comments ar…

FWIW, 'right to speech' != 'right to be heard' and 'freedom of speech' != 'freedom from consequences.'

Saying/posting something which quickly gets flagged into oblivion is freedom of speech working as intended. As is subsequent posts overcoming a flagging brigade...

Re: There are no results for tank man

#362

Post by rllearneratwork » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

Bing does show wiki link first but no image results. Duckduckgo does show wiki link first but no image results. Google shows wiki link and image results.

I am in US. Could be just that Bing is still very subpar ...

Re: There are no results for tank man

#363

Post by iso1631 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #264

partiallypro wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way it was accidental. It could have been a rogue employee that pushed something globally that was supposed to be limited to China...but the idea that it was an accident on the anniversary sounds like a made up story.

Or it could have been a normal employee that ticked the "censor everywhere" box rather than "censor china"

Of course that makes the assumption that it's known and accepted that Microsoft censor the search "tank man" to some parts of the globe, and the accident is that the censorship applied to a larger than desired scope.

It seems unlikely that you could accidently censor something like this globally without trying to do it for at least one specific target demographic.

It's also plausible that the fault was brought in deliberately by a rogue engineer to raise the subject globally.

Re: There are no results for tank man

#364

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

jturpin wrote: post #280

dang wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counteracting abuse of this site is the #1 thing we do behind the scenes to try to prevent the value of HN from eroding. That's actually what I spent the first hour of my morning doing, before I realized that there was $BigDrama happening. (Thank you, bat-signaling emailers.) If you ever see me commenting on how "large HN threads are paged for performance reasons, so click the More link at the bottom, and we'll event…

Is there any valuable connection between the users that flagged the original post that might be interesting? Not looking for specifics, since I imagine that's secret, but wondering how much of it really was standard behavior versus something else.

The flagging history of all the users who flagged that post was very consistent. There was no connection to any specific topic (nor between the accounts, that I could see). Rather, they have previously flagged stories about things like cryptocurrency, ransomware, covid lockdowns, $BigCo flamewars, and lots and lots of scandals involving such subjects as Florida, Katie Hill, and the Chicago Police Department. Also, most if not all were avid HNers, people who comment and upvote and in a few cases email us a lot.

The pattern seems clear that these users are flagging the more sensational kinds of submissions that tend to lead to predictable discussions and flamewars. There's room for competing opinions about which of those are/aren't on-topic for HN, given the site guidelines; if you or anyone want to understand how the mods look at it, I recommend the explanations at the links below. But clearly the flagging behavior in this case was in good faith.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: There are no results for tank man

#365

Post by rllearneratwork » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

jakeva wrote: post #318

varenc wrote: post #309

As discussed extensively in the Bing thread [0] comments, this is because DDG uses Bing’s search index. Microsoft has acknowledged this is in error...[1] (though the error seems to be that censorship meant to just apply to China is being applied everywhere) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8v9m/bing-censors-tank-man

I didn't know DDG uses Bing's search index. What exactly is their value proposition over Bing then?

neither did I - not using DDG again. Back to Google :(

Re: There are no results for tank man

#366

Post by TchoBeer » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

drak0n1c wrote: post #129

ufmace wrote: post #61

The CCP seems to be quite good at practical censorship. They have a history of this - they know the Great Firewall isn't perfect, and don't seem to make a tremendous effort to plug every single hole or find and lock up everyone trying to circumvent it. They know that controlling what most people see most of the time is good enough. They also know that not making too much clear direct effort against those trying to by…

In related corporate censorship, the Top Gun remake altered the physical leather jacket worn by Tom Cruise to remove the flags of Taiwan and Japan. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/top-gun-...

Lol why Japan

Re: There are no results for tank man

#367

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: There are no results for tank man

#368

Post by samcheng » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

Just curious: are there any Chinese nationals (in China) here in this thread? I want to understand the scope of censorship. What do YOU think?

Re: There are no results for tank man

#369

Post by throwaway492338 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #349

varenc wrote: post #309

As discussed extensively in the Bing thread [0] comments, this is because DDG uses Bing’s search index. Microsoft has acknowledged this is in error...[1] (though the error seems to be that censorship meant to just apply to China is being applied everywhere) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8v9m/bing-censors-tank-man

A Microsoft spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." ------ There is no way this is due to an accidental human error. The lying on this point is infuriating.

Accidentally applied worldwide instead of just China sounds possible (or more possible than "my fingers slipped on the t, a, ... keys")

Re: There are no results for tank man

#370

Post by kevincox » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #349

varenc wrote: post #309

As discussed extensively in the Bing thread [0] comments, this is because DDG uses Bing’s search index. Microsoft has acknowledged this is in error...[1] (though the error seems to be that censorship meant to just apply to China is being applied everywhere) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635 [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8v9m/bing-censors-tank-man

A Microsoft spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this." ------ There is no way this is due to an accidental human error. The lying on this point is infuriating.

Why not. A human was asked to fulfill a request to block the "tank man" search in China and forgot to add the country restriction.

There is no way to know if it is true, but it is definitely possible. This is probably an interface that isn't used incredibly frequently and may not be as polished as one might hope.