Hong Kong government accused Google Thursday of manipulating search results after it said the tech giant refused to remove a popular protest song.
Links to the pro-democracy song “Glory to Hong Kong” appeared before China’s official “March of the Volunteers” when people searched for the anthem of the city.
In China, two international sports events play with the song playing for Hong Kong athletes, which prompted the city to request that the song be remove from search engine results.
“Because Google answers billions of search queries every day, we build ranking systems to surface relevant, high quality, and helpful information,” the firm told AFP.
“No manual manipulation is done to determine a specific page’s ranking in organic search results,” the company said.
Response to Hong Kong government
In response to the city government’s request, Google declined to grant the city’s request, according to Hong Kong’s security chief Chris Tang. The explanation provided by the company – that results based on algorithms – described by him as “evasive” and “incomprehensible”.
Earlier this week, Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, said Google had a “moral obligation” to respect the national anthems of countries.
As Lee pointed out, Chinese government agencies “had a responsibility to ensure correct information is offer to the public”.
AFP reports that Google has been in contact with Hong Kong’s government in order to explain “how our platforms work” and “how we remove content”.
“Our policy does not allow us to remove web results unless for specific reasons that are detail in our global policy documentation.”
It has argue by Tang and Lee that Google search results can be manipulate, citing the placement of ad placements and the removal of certain results according to European privacy laws.
A police investigation has also requested to determine whether the anthem mix-up violated South Korea’s national security law, imposed in 2020 by Beijing to muzzle dissent after democracy protests.
Google’s search engine
There is a ban on Google’s search engine in mainland China, but it is available freely in Hong Kong, where the company has an office.
In the wake of the security law, it was among the tech companies who suspended cooperation with Hong Kong police on data requests.
In line with US sanctions, YouTube, a Google subsidiary, terminated Hong Kong leader Lee’s channel this year.
A US government sanction against Lee in 2020 was in response to his involvement in curtailing Hong Kong’s civil liberties.
