Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Baidu Starts Censoring "Occupy Central," Then Removes Censorship Notice (But Appears To Keep Censoring)

These screenshots show that Baidu began censoring "Occupy Central" (占中) early in the morning of September 29, 2014, restricting search results to about a dozen websites operated by the central government and the Communist Party.  At 1:00 am Baidu claimed it found over 22 million search results. Five hours later a censorship notice appeared above search results, and Baidu said it could find only 13.1 million search results.

Then, within 24 hours, the censorship notice had disappeared, but Baidu said it could still only find 13.2 million search results.


As of the time of this posting, Baidu is once again saying it can find over 22 million search results.

The following screenshots, which were all taken at around 6:00 am on September 30, show that Baidu was still censoring search results for "Occupy Central" for many non-China based websites.

United States: New York Times - Baidu says it can't find any search results for "Occupy Central."


Great Britain: BBC - Search results for "Occupy Central" do not include any Chinese langauge results from September 2014.



France: Radio France International - Baidu says it can't find any search results for "Occupy Central."


Germany: Deutsche Welle - Baidu says it can't find any search results for "Occupy Central."


Taiwan: United Daily News - Baidu finds one result - from 2011.



Hong Kong: Apple Daily - Baidu says it can't find any search results for "Occupy Central."


This screenshot shows, however, that Baidu was not censoring search results from all non-mainland sources: it says it is able to find over 1,500 results from the pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao.



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