back to article Bing China freezes auto-suggestions at Beijing's request

Everyone's favorite search engine (no, the other one) is caving to pressure and turning off suggestion algorithms for Chinese users. Microsoft has disabled Bing's auto-suggest functionality at the behest of Beijing, from where the Chinese Communist Party has waged war on algorithms since last year. Microsoft announced the …

  1. VoiceOfTruth

    Hostile regulations

    -> closing up shop due to increasingly hostile regulations

    Er, the USA and its poodles kicking out Huawei due to spurious 'national security' concerns. Those concerns being 'Huawei kit does not have our back doors in it'.

    1. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Hostile regulations

      Its Huawei history of stealing tech and even shop designs. I dislike Apple but they've copied their shop designs and opened identical stores. Caught claim DSLR photos were from one of its mobile cameras. Caught an employee at a trade show who was secretly taking photos of the competitors devices. The list goes on.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hostile regulations

        Don't waste your breath feeding VoiceofTroll. Just look at its post history.

      2. Graham Cobb

        Re: Hostile regulations

        Shop designs? Since when have shop designs been protected?? If the branding is identical then trademark regulation will stop that. If it isn't then there is no problem.

        And everyone at tradeshows takes photos of everyone else's equipment, messaging, stand layout, etc. I was an exhibitor at Mobile World Congress every year for 20 years and took my own share of photos, like everyone did.

        The reasons Huawei were banned were a combination of a small amount of protectionism (protecting US telecoms manufacturers) and a lot of bandwagon-jumping by politicians (mainly US) who used it as a way to deflect the public towards a safe, foreign enemy instead of domestic concerns (like, why has US domestic telecoms policy been so disastrous over many years meaning they have some of the worst, and most expensive, residential broadband and mobile in the world?).

        1. steviebuk Silver badge

          Re: Hostile regulations

          Trademark regulation wouldn't stop it in China, that is the argument. If it benefits the CCP they let it slide.

          https://mashable.com/article/huawei-spy-caught-disguised-as-weihua-employee

          Is the article about the trade show. It was attempts at taking photos of circuitry that was the issue.

  2. DS999 Silver badge

    They aren't wrong about some of this

    Particularly the part about algorithms affecting the "normal communication order, market order and social order". Not saying we should ban Facebook and Google over that, but I wish there was some sort of middle ground between "authoritarian government dictates everything" and "unlimited freedom for corporations regardless of the consequences".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They aren't wrong about some of this

      Shall we go the US way, a.k.a. corporations dictate government everything?

  3. steviebuk Silver badge

    Fuck the human rights

    We'll just bow down to China as we want those profits. Its shocking. Everyone pulls out of Russia because what they are doing is fucked up but its also big news. But because China isn't in the papers, Microsoft will bow down for profit. Fuck the piss poor human rights, fuck that the CCP are very nasty, sod the Uyghur genocide, we just want profits.

    Someone should call out Sat Nav on this and ask him why Microsoft are still trading with China.

    1. PriorKnowledge
      Devil

      Russia wasn’t a problem until…

      Russia started attacking other countries while trying to impose their will on others, that’s the difference. If China started attacking Taiwan tomorrow, you could pretty much guarantee that Microsoft and almost every other western technology supplier would turn on China in a heartbeat.

      Nobody in the business world cares if a dictator wants to oppress people, so long as they keep their ambitions constrained to the one country they rule over. When that line is crossed, that’s when things get divisive.

    2. Youngone

      Re: Fuck the human rights

      The huge American corporation I work for makes nearly $1 billion in profits every year from its Chinese operations and I don't think the shareholders particularly care how that money is made.

      The thing about China is that they have never made a secret about who they are. 30 years ago, they allowed the West access to their cheap labour force and a potential consumer market of 1 billion, and the greedy capitalists fell over themselves despite China telling them the rules were whatever China decided they would be on any given day.

      China are not the problem here.

      1. steviebuk Silver badge

        Re: Fuck the human rights

        The CCP is the problem. Since Xi took over he's started to close the country in more and more. I really like Mark Russinovich but pointed it out to him, when he showed support for Ukraine but then in another Tweet said "Azure is opening more regions in China". Considering at the start (and they probably still are) China was with Russia on it's invasion (because they thought Russia would roll over Ukraine in a couple of days), just look back at it. The way China behaved is just as bad.

  4. Notas Badoff

    ... plus c'est la même chose

    What is a pessimist - a well informed optimist

    What is an optimist - a well instructed pessimist

    Soviet Russia

  5. PhilipN Silver badge

    allow users to opt out of personalizations

    Strikes me as a Good Thing. Take a step back and realise how many times a day Mr. Average is lead by the nose when online. Because of "personalizations". It makes a very easy field for the software majors to play on.

  6. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Six of one

    It sort of sounds like the Communist Party of China saying "We don't want internet search being manipulated to Microsoft's benefit, we want the internet to be manipulated to our benefit".

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