Recently, a strange thing happened to Baidu.
On the morning of February 21, someone searched for relevant terms of "China Judgment Document Network" on Baidu, and the search results showed that no webpage related to "China Judgment Document Network" was found, and search engines such as Sogou and Bing could search normally.
After that, many people expressed dissatisfaction with Baidu. Some netizens said on Weibo: "Is the misoperation that occurred when the judgment document of a certain county was intended to be blocked?" ”
Recently, the incident of "an eight-child woman born in Feng County" has attracted much attention, and many people have discovered the shocking civil trial in Feng County through the inquiry of the "Judgment Document Network". Therefore, the website suddenly can not be searched, so that many netizens think of it.
However, shortly after the "blocking" incident occurred, Baidu responded that it was a misoperation by the technical team in dealing with other issues, which had been fixed and took effect later. At about 22:00 on the 21st, the "China Judgment Document Network" can already be searched normally by Baidu.
"China Judgment Documents Network" is not an ordinary website, it is an important channel for the disclosure of judicial cases in China, the domain name suffix of the website is ".gov.cn", the website includes many types of cases, from the return of the bride price, the problem of college students' campus loans, to the problem of medical protection and environmental pollution.
According to the data, as of February 23, 2022, the total number of documents on the China Judgment Documents Network was 129892617, and the total number of visits was 81102249836.
This may seem like a purely technical problem, but it is not. It once again unveils a topic that Baidu has been paying attention to – Baidu's monopoly power on information.
A netizen said very reasonably: "I don't know whether Baidu's operation is a misoperation, nor does it rule out the possibility of misoperation, but whether it is misoperation or not, all the masking before it is disclosed is a dark operation, and after it is disclosed, it is all misoperation, which is also a law." ”
Without further investigation, from the perspective of the event itself, at least two points can be explained:
First, Baidu has the ability to determine what users "can search for" and "what can't be searched", and it is easy to block a website.
Second, search results can be intervened, and many times can serve commercial interests, such as medical advertisements in Putian Hospital, or negative news of some enterprises, which can be hidden deeply or disappeared.
The above two points are actually not new.
On September 13, 2008, 21st Century Business Herald published an article titled "Sanlu True and False Public Relations War", revealing a document in which Sanlu tried to carry out crisis public relations against Baidu, which said: "Signed a 3 million advertising agreement with Baidu to enjoy negative news removal."
Baidu responded in the afternoon of the same day: "At the first time, it strictly rejected the proposal of Sanlu's agency public relations company."
However, an investigation by a reporter from China Youth Daily found that all the negative news about Sanlu on Baidu appeared after September 12. With the hot post title "Sanlu, please do not perform in front of the life and health of children" as a keyword search, it can be found that on the afternoon of September 12, Google displayed 11,400, while Baidu could only display 11. On the morning of September 13, Google showed 11,800 posts and Baidu 54.
In the following two months, many authoritative media, including Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and other authoritative media, questioned Baidu in turn, and also made the bidding ranking of Baidu's profit source - "keyword bidding, advertising clicks to make money" black, disclosed in front of the public for the first time.
In December 2020, ByteDance sued Baidu for artificially interfering in search results and defaming today's headlines on search pages.
The Beijing Haidian Court ruled that Baidu Company constituted a commercial defamation of unfair competition, ordered Baidu to immediately stop the above-mentioned acts of unfair competition, compensate ByteDance for economic losses and reasonable rights protection costs of 500,000 yuan, and published a statement on its official website and client in a prominent position to eliminate the impact for the plaintiff.
The court held that Baidu had artificially intervened in the search results of today's headlines for specific keywords, and falsely suggested the search results of today's headlines, violating the principle of good faith and business ethics, and harming the fair and just order of competition.
The lawsuit originated at the end of January 2018. On the evening of January 29, 2018, Today's Headlines issued a statement saying that it would sue Baidu for its "unfair competition" behavior that used its monopoly advantage.
Today's headlines said that in Baidu's search for "today's headlines", the search results ranked first are "old news" released by informal manuscripts in mid-December 2017. The second search result is "Today's Headlines Official Website", but it is marked with a warning in red characters: "Reminder: This page may not be accessible normally due to service instability".
Spending money can sink negative news, but also let the public see the announcement, which is the core logic of Baidu's bidding ranking.
On April 12, 2016, a 21-year-old named Wei Zexi died. Before he died, he answered a question in Zhihu: "What is the greatest evil of human nature", and the answer pointed to a hospital and Baidu.
Wei Zexi exchanged his life for public condemnation of the "medical bidding ranking", and after the huge discussion, the lid of Baidu's bidding ranking was completely lifted. Baidu also lowered its posture, announced the cleanup of a number of keywords, did not allow keyword bidding such as cancer and diabetes, and even withdrew the medical business department as a whole.
On May 10, 2016, after experiencing the "Hemophilia Bar Was Sold" incident and the "Wei Zexi" incident, Baidu CEO Robin Li released an internal email titled "Don't Forget your original heart, live up to your dreams". He said: "If you lose the support of users and lose your adherence to values, Baidu is really only 30 days away from bankruptcy!" ”
Whether it is the "China Judgment Documents Network" being blocked, or the "Today's Headlines" search results being interfered with, or the "Sanlu Milk Powder Giving Money to Delete Drafts" and the famous "Wei Zexi Incident", all point to the same core issue: whether Baidu abused its market dominance and intervened in search results.
Although Baidu has repeatedly said that the search results are all big data matches, they have been calculated by machines, denying human intervention. But skeptics often believe that whoever pays or pays more from the bidding ranking can be ranked first in the search results or block information that is not good for them.
Lei Xia, an associate researcher at the Institute of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the era of new media, one of the most important ways for everyone to obtain information is through network search, and Baidu search is a search engine with high user dependence.
Wang Sixin, deputy dean and professor of the School of Politics and Law at the Communication University of China, said that for anyone who uses it, the search engine is to lead him to the information window of the curious, unknown and external world, and is a platform for information and values aggregation.
Baidu's disclosed data shows that Baidu APP monthly active users have exceeded 600 million. This means that tens of millions of users get information through Baidu every day. If the results were all interfered with, how terrible would the consequences be?
In early 2020, Robin Li said in a speech at the Shaastra 2020 Technology Festival held by the Madras Branch of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) that search will be changed by artificial intelligence, and more and more searches will get answers directly, rather than giving users a lot of links to find the right answers on their own, as in the past.
This statement is correct, the search engine ranking is based on the algorithm, but why should we believe that the algorithm is fair, perfect, rigorous, and believe in the company behind the algorithm?
The Provisions on the Administration of Internet Information Search Services issued by the State Internet Information Office clearly require that "Internet information search service providers shall provide objective, fair, and authoritative search results, and must not harm the national interest, the public interest, or the lawful rights and interests of citizens, legal persons, and other organizations."
If these are not guaranteed, what you want to see is not necessarily what you want to see, and what you actually see is only what others want you to see.
A few years ago, at the symposium on network security and informatization work, the highest level said a sentence: "Running a website cannot blindly pursue the click rate, those who open online stores must guard against counterfeiting, those who do social platforms cannot become rumor spreaders, and those who do search cannot only use the amount of money given as the ranking standard." ”
Who is the last sentence talking about? I believe Baidu knows it.