Forum Post: Internet Parallax

Internet Censorship is a big issue, but it doesn't really manifest in big or spectacular ways, it is often in trivial, or apparently insignificant things where Censorship leads the way open to totalitarianism (or corporative regimes). Here is a silly game I came up with, I was trying to get a feel of censorship in a playful way. Any suggestions or comments are welcomed.

Procrastination game 23. Searching Engine’s parallax.

a. Open a window for Google (or other) b. Open a second window for another big searching engine (ex. Baidu) c. Search the exact same term on both engines. d. Compare results! e. Post any fun, curious, or horrifying findings!

Here is an example:

Term searched: ‘Wikileaks’. Compared Searching enginges: Google, Baidu. Stuff I noticed: Google’s first hit took me directly to the official ‘.org’ site. However, the official wikileaks page was not even present in Baidu’s first page of results. Baidu’s first search result took me directly to a wikileaky wannabe address, which was nonworking with the ‘under construction’ label (in my opinion, a shady but elegant diversive move: if you mostly navigate with Baidu, and you decide one day to check wikileaks, you might think the site is down and not notice the censorship). Conclusion: This is a basic example on China’s Internet censorship through manipulation of search engines’ results. Observing big coorporative American censorship tecniques would be ideal. It has been harder to catch a solid ‘google censor area’, but I am sure there are plenty. Also if you choose the search engines carefully, you can use this to 'see' the world through different sets of eyes.