Internet censorship

For the web 2.0 class I am taking, we had to do some research on internet censorship. We were given specific terms to research on the following search engines: google.com, bing.com and from China, baidu.com (CHina's search engine) and google.cn (Google's china website). The terms and what I found out are listed below.

1. uss yorktown nt
The results for each search engine were very similar. I suspect that this is because the subject was not offensive to the current Chinese government.

2. google china censorship
With google.com and bing.com, I managed to find stories about the censorship that  covered it in depth and about the impact on people. While I was able to find stories on china censorship on the other two search engine, the summaries were not in depth and were tended to be slanted towards the Chinese government rather than what was actually happening.

3. Tiananmen Square
Both google.com and bing.com had results that covered the Tiananmen massacre/protest as well as general information about the location. There was also basic tourist information available as well as a virtual tour. Videos were also listed. History information was available.

Baidu.com listed the following results: results for the Olympics that were held there, tourist information and general information that residents would use. There was also some tourist information listed. There was no mention of the student protests or any results that would show the Chinese government in a bad light.

Google.cn showed similar results and images. Once again there was nothing controversial and nothing that could be considered offensive to the Chinese government. If it can't be seen by the residents of that country, then nothing of that nature has ever happened. With enough time and brainwashing, history can be rewritten for the residents of China. I find this to be disturbing. It is difficult enough to find factual and truthful information online without having to worry about access to information being limited and the information sanitized ; and even worse being rewritten with no regard to what the truth actually is.

4. Taiwan Independence
To a point, all four search engine showed similar results. The search engine that are china based showed less detailed summaries or synopsis. Once again, it appears that the results are sanitized and limited on those search engines.

While I can see the appeal of censoring hate groups to prevent them from spreading their poison and infecting others, censorship is a dangerous practice. Great harm can be done by changing the truth into lies. There is a fine line to walk.  Certain things should be censored or controlled. What is going on in world events should be told in a factual and truthful manner, not censored because it might make your government look bad or make said government's population think and question what is going on.