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Human-flesh Search Engines in China (nytimes.com)
59 points by citizenparker on March 4, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



Google's Human-flesh search engine:

http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html

Google translation (weak):

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=zh-...

(btw if you search for anything, it informs you (in Chinese) that it's an April fools joke)

For translations of these kinds of forum discussions see http://www.chinasmack.com


"It’s easy to denounce the tyranny of the online masses when you live in a country that has strong rule of law and institutions that address public corruption, but in China the human-flesh search engine is one of the only ways that ordinary citizens can try to go after corrupt local officials. Cases like the Lin Jiaxiang search, as imperfect as their outcomes may be, are examples of the human-flesh search as a potential mechanism for checking government excess."


There are lots of little communities that are good at this. 4Chan comes to mind. They made boxxy super popular, then subsequently killed her off lol.

Kind of scary when you give a mob mentality to a mob not constrained by numbers, location, or power.



Did no one notice the fake chinese characters?


Abrupt ending. Is page 7 missing?


I thought it was quite fitting.




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