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Ask HN: “Tank man” image search blocked on Bing and DuckDuckGo

560 points by MaxHoppersGhost ↗ HN
If you google “tank man” and click on images in Bing and DDG either nothing shows up (Bing) or unrelated photos shows up (DDG). Images show up in Google.

What does HN make of this? I would think that Bing/DDG would have separate search results in China so I’m quite surprised to see this happening outside of China.

137 comments

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officialjunk
i am getting google results outside of china for that search term. first result is the wikipedia article with that same title. and many image results as well.
misterpigs
DDG: image searching "tank man": "blocked by safe search" and then "sorry no results here" when disabling safe search entirely
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
zatertip
"tank man china" gets me the expected results on DDG
jjulius
But no images on Bing for the same query.
Multicomp
Didn't work for me, though it does link to the wikipedia article as the first link.
iso1631
Interesting, the first 4 results are pictures of tanks, which ddg is currently (for me) showing for an image search for "tank man"

The 5th result is a picture of Chinese police on segways in modernish day Tianamen square

"China still gets annoyed with images showing the famous ...markets.businessinsider.com"

but that doesn't show up on "tank man" alone.

The actual famous image is result 10 and 11 (slight difference, 10 has 4 tanks, 11 taken from a different angle and presumably a little earlier has 3)

maedla
dumb algorithm can't figure out the context of "Tank man"
the_only_law
I’d expect it to bring up something though, given that search engines can pull a ton of irrelevant content farm crap at the least for some of the most specific searches I’ve done.
Brian_K_White
There is no legitimate explaination for why there is no infinite scroll of for example, water tanks.
Multicomp
I confirm the symptoms happened for me as well. I used the !s bang to have startpage search it and startpage returned the image in the carousel and image results.

I'm not certain I can continue to use duck duck go if it is going to give me results subjected to CCP censorship. I switched to it from Startpage as it had a less shady reputation than the latter, but Startpage hasn't messed with my actual searches like DDG now has though.

jjulius
Doesn't DDG use Bing on the backend (at least to some extent? Forgive my ignorance here). My hunch is that it has more to do with that, as opposed to it being a conscious decision by people at DDG.
astrea
They do bulk purchase search results from Bing.
Multicomp
Agreed. But if Bing is going to pull stuff like this, and DDG just wraps Bing results, it can leave users with questions about what else may be being censored, directly or not.
DaedPsyker
‘Tank man China’ returns the image on DDG as does bing (Although not the first result). I think you are correct that this could be on Microsoft.

DDG should seriously consider the provider if there is going to be political censorship from their sources.

xvector
Abhorrent behavior by Bing. Hopefully a provider issue on DDG’s end.
[dead] dangerface
Been using DDG for the past year the results are fairly poor and now they are licking CCP boot, ill have to start using startpage.
iso1631
I've been using it for years and rarely do I have to go elsewhere. When I have struggle to find what I want and gone to google, the results are invariably worse under google. YMMV, E&OE.

I believe some senior DDG people frequent HN, so look forward to their explanation

jeroenhd
DDG partners with several search providers. It seems they partner with Bing for image search.

Give them some time to investigate this and to consider switching to a new provider for search results. Microsoft is licking the CCP's boot here, as far as we know DDG is merely a victim to their complacency with censorship.

dbtc
"We all live in America" -Rammstein, 2004

"..." -..., 2021

srmarm
Does surprise me to be honest, of course the CCP no doubt does exert power over companies that want to work in China and this can influence behaviour outside the country too.

But surprised to see this so blatant and really quite clumsily too as easy to find in other contexts without difficulty.

aj3
This is definitely clumsy. Compare with searching for "坦克人" which gives all sort of tanks just not the one you're looking for (Google shows the same image for both English and Chinese search term).
xtracto
Searching for "tank guy" without quotes gives you pictures of the tank man.
jagger27
Weird. I’m seeing this in Canada too. I see the Wikipedia article too but no images show up on the image search.
tyingq
I get the image if I'm more specific on DDG, via "tank man tiananmen square". Maybe just DDG needing more context than Google?
aj3
nah, it has results for "tank men", so absence of results altogether is definitely censorship
kevincox
In general a less specific query should return more results. It seems like Bing is explicitly blocking that search.
twobitshifter
I don’t think so, the substring should match right?

Something funny is happening

Search for tank man - 4 images

Search for tank man China - many images including the one we expect as the first result

Search for tank man again - Images blocked by safe search.

The same search gave me different results!

rapnie
This query gave me 2 results, but others had random images (e.g. a happy seal), and in other places I see a white 'no preview available' icon, for instance on the Amnesty page that contains the image.
kstrauser
I searched for “fnord cakewalk” and got a pageful of results. It’s impossible that 2 generic words like “tank” and “man” give 0 results whatsoever for organic reasons.
gdw2
"tank woman" and "tank guy" returns lots of results.
xenocratus
I get the image, but I have to scroll some, and click on "Show more" even though there is only one row of results at a time...
swiley
That's incredibly disappointing. :(
Animats
Bing, not logged in, gave me the Wikipedia entry and an article about the photographer, 30 years later.
partiallypro
It does for web results, click on "images" and it shows nothing.
Animats
Try image search for

tank man tiananmen square

"Tank man" alone is not specific enough for image search. It's probably found in main search only because Wikipedia uses that phrase.

partiallypro
Right, but it show no results at all. It is clearly not an algorithmic choice, someone has manually made the query return nothing. When I search other variations it simply gives me completely irrelevant images, such as images from the square in modern times.

I am an unabashed Microsoft fan, but this is abhorrent. I really hope they put out a statement and correct this. To me it would be like searching for "holocaust" or "Emmett Till" and getting no results.

partiallypro
This is interesting. On the web results it shows up, but under images it doesn't show anything.
kstrauser
That’s very odd. In DDG, searching for “tank man” with “Safe search: moderate” returns 4 pictures of men in or next to tanks. Setting “Safe search: off” returns 0 pictures, not even the 4 utterly safe images from the “moderate” search.
iso1631
It did when I searched 5 minutes ago. Now I get no results and "Images blocked by safe search" on strict/moderate, and no results on "off".
kstrauser
Oh wow, can confirm. Now I’m not getting any results either.
iso1631
back to 4 images for me now
iso1631
And the image that was shown on the wikipedia insert on normal ddg search has vanished.
mvolfik
for me it works such that if I search for text results and switch to images, the 4 are shown. But they disappear afer any refresh of the page, no matter safe search settings
sct202
Bing is usually allowed in China past the Great Firewall so it's not too surprising that it's censoring.

I think this is what people were afraid of happening with Googles project to reenter the Chinese search market if some of the censorship rules would leak back into the US by accident.

hef19898
That is what I am worried about. That our capitalist society is easily subverted by money, either directly or indirectly, by totalitarian regimes. You see that with sports leagues and movie studios bowing to China, and especially by soccer bowing to Arabian countries. That leads to content bordering propaganda and self-censorship of entities in democratic countries for the sake of a quick dime.
sireat
I can confirm that in Eastern Europe Bing and DDG image bring nothing on 'tank man'.

However 'tank man' brings the relevant wikipedia as the top result in regular search.

So Bing and by extension DDG must have forgotten to turn off their CCP flag globally. At least that's my somewhat charitable interpretation. I am guessing DDG is piggy backing off Bing and therein lies the problem.

scop
I can confirm this, using DDG in USA. What the hell?
scop
This thread is now flagged. What the hell?
thatsnotmepls
What does it mean when a thread is flagged?
grzm
> "What does [flagged] mean?"

> "It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on Hacker News."

> "Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

kgwxd
Odd, just 5 unrelated pictures on DDG. I thought maybe safe search might have something to do with it but with that off I get 0 results.
aksss
Can confirm, tank man with or without quotes yields zero results under images with safe search off. That’s nuts.
vinhant
Same here. "tank man" image search in Bing returns absolutely no result. However "tank man tiananmen square" returns images but half of them with no image of a tank.
iso1631
Why has this been flagged?!
ct0
very very odd....
jeroenhd
I'm quite disappointed in Microsoft with their blatant submission to the CCP. I hope DDG switches search providers, because this is simply unacceptable behavior.
gunfighthacksaw
Now try the search (without quotes)’img src’ on DDG images vs Yahoo images and ask yourself what’s up with that.