According to a new report from the Media Research Center, Google has allegedly been engaging in election interference for at least 16 years. The media watchdog group has been studying how Google’s search algorithms are used for censorship. Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham spoke with Morning Wire’s Georgia Howe about the allegations. Catch the full interview on Morning Wire.
Georgia: So Megan, if these claims are true, we’re talking about four presidential cycles and another four midterms, right?
Megan: Yes, that’s a lot of elections, Georgia. The report just released by MRC’s Free Speech America arm says Google interfered in US elections 41 times since 2008. And when you take a look at Google’s donations to political parties in just the 2018 midterm elections, for example, you can see just how aligned the company is with one side of the political aisle. 96% of its employee’s political donations went to Democrats. So according to the MRC, the company, “utilized its power to help push to electoral victory the most liberal candidates … while targeting their opponents for censorship.”
In 2012, for instance, it allowed users to engage in a practice called a “Google Bomb” to target Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum. It’s kind of complicated, but it’s basically a way to smear a candidate. Google users manipulate the algorithms by associating his name with undesirable search terms on various web pages. So when you would search Santorum’s name, disparaging and even obscene results would come up.
When the practice impacted the White House’s webpage for Obama, Google fixed it. But, the platform refused to resolve the issue when Santorum’s team complained. In some instances, Google’s interference backed one Democrat over another, leaning towards the more progressive candidate, though interestingly, not in the case of Bernie Sanders vs Clinton. In 2008, Google suspended the accounts of some pro-Hillary Clinton blogs who were critical of Barack Obama. Several of those blogs were listed at justsaynodeal.com.
LISTEN: Catch the full interview on Morning Wire
Georgia: I’m guessing when it came time for the Clinton — Trump election, they leaned in favor of Clinton.
Megan: Definitely. Turns out the Alphabet company is also pretty good with numbers. According to data scientist and research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, who testified before Congress by the way, the impact of Google’s search algorithm was to “shift at least 2.6 million votes” to Clinton in 2016, though of course she still lost to Trump. But according to this it would have been by a wider margin without the Google effect.
What they are essentially alleging is Google manipulated search results to convince voters to pull the lever for Clinton. For example, everyone has used Google’s search bar before, and when you start to type in some text, Google begins to autofill suggestions. During the 2016 election, it would exclude potentially harmful autofill results for Hillary Clinton and would instead suggest things like “Hillary Clinton crime reform” or “Hillary Clinton India”. On the flip side, it would not filter results for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Google has repeatedly claimed these allegations are false. But when you to listen closely to this Project Veritas undercover recording from 2019 of Jen Gennai, the then Head of Responsible Innovation for Google, you hear a different story:
#11 In 2019, Project Veritas released footage of Google executive, Jen Gennai, discussing “preventing the next Donald Trump situation.”
She remarked, “We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” pic.twitter.com/4SnvqnyIx3
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) January 30, 2023
Irish accent aside, she said, “We’re also training our algorithms if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” So suggesting they had already begun refining their results to alter election outcomes.
She went on to say: “Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google. And like, I love her, but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better. It will make it worse, because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation. It’s like a small company cannot do that.”
So again, a top Google executive saying Congress should not interfere with Google’s almost total dominance of the search engine industry because only Google can prevent someone like Donald Trump from being elected.
Georgia: So what is Google saying about this?
Megan: They haven’t responded at all yet. But some well known names in the tech world are backing MRC’s findings though. Elon Musk, for instance, posted on his platform, X: ““Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season!” Musk wrote on X. “This is to be expected when their censorship (aka ‘Trust & Safety’) teams have far Left political views.”
This article understates the magnitude of the problem – Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season!
This is to be expected when their censorship (aka “Trust & Safety”) teams are have far left political views. https://t.co/y36yzdzIUQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2024
And of course Google’s new AI tool came under fire recently for producing extremely biased results.
It’s also worth noting that a few weeks ago, another media analysis company, AllSides, studied Google’s news aggregator and found that 63 percent of the news it recommended came from Left-leaning outlets and only 6 percent from right leaning outlets. And only 16 percent from outlets rated “center.”
Georgia: One of my first “wakeup moments” that caused me to be interested in politics was in 2015 or 2016 when I noticed how positive the suggested searches were for Clinton compared to Trump. Thanks, Megan.
Megan: Any time.