Filtering politics, sex, booze and humor
Here is more information on just what Google is filtering in China, by way of CNET news.com, confirming the point that political and cultural ‘streams’ are under tight control in China. See this link for a table demonstrating what is and is not filtered.
What Google censors in China
January 26, 2006, 1:27 PM PST
Google’s new China search engine not only censors many Web sites that
question the Chinese government, but it goes further than similar
services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting teen pregnancy,
homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes.In addition, CNET News.com has found that contrary to Google founder
Sergey Brin’s promise to inform users when their search results are
censored, the company frequently filters out sites without revealing it.
By the way, if any of our colleagues from China are reading, what do you think about this development? How aware are Chinese citizens that the information they are receiving via online search engines is restricted? Does this shape their perceptions and expectations of media-based information?
Hey. I went to http://www.google.cn and tried to search for date.com which the chart says is blocked. It came up fine. Any ideas as to why this might be so?
I would assume they do the filtering based upon IP address — that is, the location of the machine accessing the site. But I’m not sure. I also tried a few and some links came up. However, I notice that all of these appear to be Beta sites in the Chinese version.
I’ll have to look into this some more.
I tried this search string on google.cn:
google censor china and this is what i got:
Google to censor China Web searches | Tech News on ZDNet – [ 翻译此页 BETA ]
Google to censor China Web searches | Search giant agrees to censorship laws,
reasoning that users getting limited access to content was better than none. |
news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6030784.html – 42k – 网页快照 – 类似网页
Google Agrees to Censor Results in China – Yahoo! News – [ 翻译此页 BETA ]
Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China,
adhering to the country’s free-speech restrictions in return for better access
in the Internet’s fastest growing market.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060125/ap_on_hi_te/google_china – 36k – 网页快照 – 类似网页
Google to censor China Web searches | CNET News.com – [ 翻译此页 BETA ]
Google to censor China Web searches | Search giant agrees to censorship laws,
reasoning that users getting limited access to content was better than none.
| January 24, 2006, 7:25 PM PT | Elinor Mills.
news.com.com/Google+to+censor+China+Web+searches/2100-1028_3-6030784.html – 55k – 网页快照 – 类似网页
I suppose this is because Google.cn is filtered when you do the search in China…