The Unknown Rebel

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June 4th was the (sad) anniversary of the famous photo of Unknown rioter in Tiananmen Square. We doubt we can add anything to the rivers of words written and said in these 32 years. However, we wanted to do a test that best suits us, that is, we tried to search for the phrase Tank Man on search engines.

Tank Man it is in fact the way in which this image is universally known. We know about Chinese censorship and the inability to find information about the Tiananmen Square massacre if you are in China ¹. However we are in Europe and we took it for granted that if we searched for these words on the major search engines we would find the images we were looking for.

It didn't go exactly as we thought.

For those in a hurry:

• On the anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre Microsoft removed any results for the phrase “Tank Man” in the images section of Bing. Tank Man this is how the photo of the Unknown Rioter in front of a tank is universally recognized.

• All the search engines you depend on Bing have suffered from this problem. Also included DuckDuckGo who, evidently, uses it as a primary source. Also to Brave Search it happened but it was explained that it happened because it is still in beta and does not yet have its own image index which, however, will arrive later.

• Google And Yandex they didn't have this problem. Microsoft admitted a "human error" and brought the situation back to normal on Saturday 5 June.

The Unknown Rebel

In fact, we did the first tests with DuckDuckGo, our first Search engine suggested how alternative to Google Search. However DuckDuckGo has always prided itself on not censoring the results or manipulating them (even though we know this is no longer the same as it used to be ²). So let's look for the words Tank Man on the web and we only find Wikipedia results (always be praised). No videos, no recent news about the anniversary or anything.

However, we move on to images where we discover that, evidently, nothing ever happened on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

In fact, he has a sad face telling us that he hasn't found any results. Let's try it then Tiananmen square tank but we only find peaceful parades of tanks and more generic photos of Tiananmen Square. Not quite what we expected to find. By moving the order of the words a little something changes, even if a little haphazardly. Tiananmen Tank Man in fact finds a consistent result, Tank Man Tiananmen but still nothing.

DuckDuckGo in addition to having its own crawler (i.e. a bot that indexes websites) it is famous for also using the crawlers of other search engines. Among these the most famous is certainly Bing Of Microsoft.

So let's go and check it out immediately Bing ³.

Tank Man, Bing and Qwant

No surprise when we see that the results are literally identical. In fact, nothing has ever happened for Microsoft either looking for Tank Man absolutely nothing can be found.

The list gets longer if we also add other search engines with their own crawler such as Qwant: same sentence and same results.

Because of Bing, Swisscows, Ecosia and many others are also groping in the dark

We know for sure that some engines they only use Bing results anonymizing them as for example Swisscows, Ecosia, Lilo and many others. However, this shouldn't be the case DuckDuckGo And Qwant which instead should also have independent results and in any case also use different engines from Bing.

On Saturday 5 June Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo, lets us know that the problem was solely and exclusively with Bing and not of DuckDuckGo. Indeed, he is keen to let us know that DuckDuckGo has been banned from China since 2014 and that they have no plans to please China's censorship madness ⁴.

Let's find out though all the images of DuckDuckGo they come from Bing. A bitter discovery.

And Qwant?

On Saturday Microsoft he settled the issue believing he could get away with "it was a human error" (we'll come back to this later). At the same time they also adjusted DuckDuckGo and the various search engines they depend on Microsoft. Everybody except Qwant.

Qwant she is also the only one who doesn't respond and doesn't say anything on Twitter (and ignores us) nor anywhere else. Self DuckDuckGo is partly excused in how many his results were really the fault of Bing, evidently it is not the same for Qwant.

What happened then? To date, Qwant is the only one Search engine which censors the phrase Tank Man. We believe this is the case Qwant give explanations, but so far everything is silent. Disturbing if we think that their marketing is all based on the fact of being a Search engine alternative and European.

The Unknown Rioter and Mojeek

In the meantime, however, we did other tests and continued the research by trying other engines. We tried too Mojeek, famous for being one of the very few alternative search engines with its own crawler. A small European reality which we are often proud of and which should not submit to whims And to the censorship of a dictatorship. Also Mojeek it gave zero results but we were immediately given an answer Twitter as soon as we contacted them: it is perfectly normal because in the images section they only and exclusively use results coming from Pixabay ⁵. In fact, going to the 'web' everything was as it should be.

And finally Brave Search

Let's open a separate parenthesis regarding instead Brave Search. For those who don't know: the Browsers Brave is preparing a Search engine with its own index without having to depend on anyone else. It's extremely interesting but it's still in beta and for use by a few people. Thanks to a person in our group we were able to see that too Brave Search it gave zero results with the query Tank Man. We are not posting the screenshot because it would be prohibited by the terms of use beta Of Brave Search and we don't want to create problems for those who have passed them on to us.

Long story short: being in beta they are still using Bing for images but it is not the definitive solution. For the web they already have their own index while they are working on having it for images and videos as well ⁶.

But let's go in order, because at the beginning it wasn't entirely clear what was happening.

We've seen that Brendand Eich, CEO of Brave, gave explanations on Twitter saying words without the possibility of misunderstanding such as:

Why even Brave Search?

Brendan Eich but it only talks about the web section and not about images. So we have asked for explanations of this and we were sent back to another tweet where the Brave team in the person of Jonathan Sampson, perhaps not yet having a clear idea of what was happening, replies that it is normal because Tank Man It's too general a phrase ⁷.

However this answer makes no sense for at least two reasons:

• Tank Man it is literally the name by which that photo is universally recognized (it is the name of the his entry on Wikipedia)

• Although Tank Man generic pits are two words that together should produce results like men on tanks. Not zero.

When a Sampson is pointed out ⁸ he immediately admits that this is very strange and that it is actually a mistake and that it would have been fixed immediately, and so it was shortly after⁹.

Brave therefore it will also have its own index for images and videos but this is not yet the case. And because of this he suffered from the same problem as DuckDuckGo. In the future, according to its CEO, this will no longer be the case.

The Unknown Rebel, so what happened?

Nobody gave a real explanation. During Friday evening and Saturday, other articles were also published such as this of Vice who asked for explanations from Microsoft. Microsoft he admitted it was just a human error which he remedied. Without adding anything else.

A human error that occurred randomly on the anniversary date of Tiananmen Square massacre and always casually with the phrase Tank Man?

The most likely thing in our opinion? Microsoft is now used to bowing to the demands of the Chinese dictatorship in order not to lose that market share ^{10 11 12}. They most likely activated censorship for everyone rather than just for residents of China. That's probably the most likely thing.

The restlessness remains not having received any serious response. Microsoft will continue to fill his mouth with civil rights and participate in campaigns like #StopHateForProfit trying to make people forget this episode which as usual will end up forgotten on the internet after a couple of days.

We are left with the annoying sensation of having been left at the mercy of an abominable censorship applied throughout the world for hundreds of millions of people. There remains anxiety and anguish in seeing how easy it is to censor content on the internet when a company controls an enormous slice of the market (and despite everything it is also small compared to Google).

Google and the others

Speaking of Google, in the meantime we would like to underline for completeness of information that we have also tried other search engines such as Google, Yandex, Startpage (which uses Google results), Presearch And Searx who however did not have this problem. Or better, Searx had some of that: depends on whether image search was enabled with Bing And Qwant.

Update on Google: thanks to a your post on the group Telegram let's add that sentence Tank Man it has been censored for some time now Google in China ¹³. They were just better at not letting censorship spread all over the world as it mistakenly did Microsoft.

From us, a big round of applause to Mojeek for the prompt response on Twitter and a sharp increase in interest in Presearch And Searx who have effectively demonstrated how decentralization and the multiple and simultaneous use of multiple search engines can be a possible solution to the dominance of Big Tech. There also remains the curiosity to see what it will be like Brave Search when the indexing of the contents will be completed also with regards to images and videos.

Big disappointment though Qwant which remains the only company to have given no explanations and to have left censorship active for days.

Update 07/06: also on the evening of Monday 7 June Qwant he finally fixed the problem without giving any explanation.

1. Great Firewall on Wikipedia[↩]
2. Popular Pirate Sites 'Disappear' From DuckDuckGo's Top Search Results[↩]
3. Bada Bing, Bada Boom[↩]
4. Gabriel Weinberg on Twitter[↩]
5. Mojeek's response on Twitter[↩]
6. Brendan Eich on Twitter[↩]
7. Tweet by Sampson[↩]
8. ZsoltSandor on Twitter[↩]
9. Sampson on Twitter[↩]
10. Microsoft Accused Of Censoring Search Results — In The US[↩]
11. Microsoft helps China to censor bloggers[↩]
12. Censorship in China – Wikipedia[↩]
13. Google in China – Wikipedia[↩]

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