Microsoft says error led to no matching Bing images for Tiananmen ‘tank man’
A man holds a poster of the famous ‘Tank Man’ standing in front of Chinese military tanks at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989, during a candlelit remembrance in Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4, 2020, after the annual vigil that traditionally takes place in the park to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown was banned on public health grounds because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. – Tens of thousands of people across Hong Kong lit candles and chanted democracy slogans on June 4 to commemorate China’s deadly Tiananmen crackdown, defying a ban against gathering as tensions seethed over a planned new security law. (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP) / The erroneous mention[s] appearing in the metadata of this photo by Anthony WALLACE has been modified in AFP systems in the following manner: [a poster of the famous ‘Tank Man’] instead of [a poster showing the famous Jeff Widener’s ‘Tank Man’ photo]. Please immediately remove the erroneous mention[s] from all your online services and delete it (them) from your servers. If you have been authorized by AFP to distribute it (them) to third parties, please ensure that the same actions are carried out by them. Failure to promptly comply with these instructions will entail liability on your part for any continued or post notification usage. Therefore we thank you very much for all your attention and prompt action. We are sorry for the inconvenience this notification may cause and remain at your disposal for any further information you may require. (Photo by ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)
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(Reuters) — Microsoft Corp on Friday blamed “accidental human error” for its Bing search engine not showing image results for the query “tank man” in the United States and elsewhere after users raised concerns about possible censorship around the Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary.
Users, including in the United Kingdom, Germany and Singapore, reported Friday that when they performed the search Bing returned the message, “There are no results for tank man.”
David Greene, civil liberties director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and “egregious mistakes are made all the time.”
But he said it could be more sinister: “At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state.”
Hours after Microsoft acknowledged the issue, the “tank man” search returned only pictures of tanks elsewhere in the world.
“Tank man” is often used to describe an unidentified person famously pictured standing before tanks in China’s Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy demonstrations in June 1989.
Microsoft said the issue was “due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this.”
Smaller search engines such as DuckDuckGo that license results from Microsoft faced similar issues around “tank man” searches and said they expected a fix soon.
Rival Google showed many results for the famous image when the “tank man” search was performed on Friday.
A significant percentage of the Microsoft employees who work on Bing are based in China, including some who work on image-recognition software, according to a former employee.
China is known to require search engines operating in its jurisdiction to censor results, but those restrictions are rarely applied elsewhere.
