Search engines help us find what we’re looking for. So when governments put pressure on search companies, the results can be sinister.
A cyber-monitoring group says Microsoft’s Bing is squelching politically sensitive topics. What are their responsibilities, and what can people do to keep the information flowing?
Linguist Daniel Midgley searches for answers on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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Show notes
Facebook allows custom genders
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/facebook-now-allows-users-to-pick-a-custom-gender-beyond-mal
About 50+ in all.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/facebook_offers_50plus_new_gender_options_for_users/
Cis-
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cis-
An Internet watchdog accuses Microsoft’s Bing of censoring Sino-sensitive results, even outside China.http://phys.org/news/2014-02-microsoft-bing-accused-chinese-language-censorship.html
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/11/bing-censors-chinese-language-search-results
Microsoft denies ithttp://phys.org/news/2014-02-microsoft-denies-chinese-language-bing-censorship.html
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/12/microsoft-bing-censor-chinese-search-results-system-error?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Bing has some ‘splaining to do.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/herdict/2014/02/13/bing-needs-to-explain-its-search-algorithms/
What do you do if you’re a search engine in China?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/internet-censorship
Google’s history of censorship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
Google says it’s getting hammered
http://www.pcworld.com/article/257808/google_reports_alarming_rate_of_government_censorship.html
and puts out a transparency report to document it all.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/
Bing could use one of those.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/micorsoft-bing-china-censorship-transparency
Google now explains the censorship, and provides suggestions.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/may/31/google-alert-chinese-users-censored
Blogger redirects you to a country-specific URL so it can censor country by country.
https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/2402711?hl=en
Chinese speakers have ways around this.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2699
Kevin Slavin on how algorithms shape our world
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html
How do search engines work?http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine.htm
http://www.searchcatalyst.co.uk/learn/how-do-search-engines-work
There have been many Google Bombs over the years.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/google-bombs/
Google put a stop to them.
http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363
Why not try DuckDuckGo?
https://duckduckgo.com/
The words of the Winter Olympics
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/winter-olympics/10627035/Winter-Olympics-the-language-explained.html
