Cue the Greek chorus throwing shade at Microsoft for taking measures to not get their products banned in the largest nation on Earth.
I m assuming those searches were not done from locations where Chinese laws apply, right?
The subtitle of the article says "The censorship even applies to searches in the US and Canada, researchers say."
"Reportedly"? TBH, that doesn't really seem hard to verify.
it's reportedly because the analysis uses indirect statistical inference. I read the whitepaper and I'm not convinced by their statistical analysis but they did uncover some interesting results.