A nuclear political bomb has detonated in Silicon Valley, and Google is ground zero. Late Tuesday, excerpts from a reportedly leaked i...
A nuclear political bomb has detonated in Silicon Valley, and Google is ground zero.
Late Tuesday, excerpts from a reportedly leaked internal Google document were published by The Daily Caller. The excerpts, if accurate, confirm what conservatives have long suspected — that conservatives are being actively suppressed by arguably the most powerful company in the world.
The Daily Caller reported that a Google blacklist of conservative websites includes the Conservative Tribune as well as “Gateway Pundit, Matt Walsh’s blog, Gary North’s blog ‘teapartyeconomist.com,’ Caroline Glick’s website … and the website of the American Spectator.”
The impact of this leak cannot be overstated. Google is already reeling — and panicking, as the quality of its first response to the leak reflects — because of how bad this looks for a company that has vociferously denied rigging its products against conservatives.
But far and away the most devastating part of the leak, which Google doesn’t deny is authentic, appears to confirm that Google CEO Sundar Pichai either misleadingly parsed the truth or did, in fact, lie to a committee of the United States Congress.
On Dec. 11, 2018, Pichai appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about allegations of Google’s bias. Pichai worded his responses very carefully, but he’ll live to regret four damning words: “We don’t manually intervene on any particular search result” (emphasis added).
Conservatives have long thought that Google is suppressing their points of view, making it harder for conservative news and opinion to make it into the top section of the page Google displays when a user searches a word or phrase that might be in the news.
The leak appears to confirm that’s exactly what is happening. The most damaging item is an alleged memo obtained by The Daily Caller on how Google’s blacklist is managed.
The memo states in part:
“The investigation of the watchlist is done in the tool Athena, the Ares manual review tool, and intakes signals from Search, Webspan, and Ares in order to complete reviews. … Once a domain is determined to be violating the misrepresentation policy or the Good Neighbor Policy, such patterns are then added to deceptive_news_blacklist_domains.txt by the Trust & Safety team” (emphasis added).
Google’s defenders might say that such a system’s existence doesn’t prove Pichai’s lying. But that isn’t true. The system described in that memo uses a ‘manual review tool’ that helps catalog websites Google claims are violating its terms of service. Once a site is determined to be in severe enough violation, it is added to a .txt file containing a list of blacklisted domains. Those websites then will not appear in Google News and potentially other search products.
The system doesn’t target one particular search result. It targets vast numbers of particular search results — results that would lead to blacklisted sites.
To the extent that that is true — and Google has denied none of that, to our knowledge — Pichai was lying.
Google and its protectors appear to be staking their defense on the idea that the manual review tool doesn’t affect what they call ‘blue link” results (“blue links” is a jargon term referring to the top 10 links Google returns for most searches). They’re quick to point out that Pichai’s “no manual intervention” answer referred to blue links. But it didn’t.
Remember, the manual intervention comment came up during the Judiciary Committee meeting when Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., asked Pichai why searching the term “idiot” returned pictures of President Donald Trump. The pictures she was talking about were notblue links. They were images. That means Pichai’s answer did not refer to blue links. He was most likely referring to another Google search product — Google Images.
This is not about blue links. It’s about Google blacklisting conservatives so that results skew against them.
This should be a clarion call to war for conservative members of Congress. Conservative speech is under attack. If we lose free speech on the internet, we’re finished. Traditional media is circling the drain. Print newspapers are dying.
If online suppression continues, in 20 years, 10 years, or maybe even five years, conservatives will find any idea they publicize immediately relegated to the ash heap of history.
Well, it won’t actually be an ash heap. It’ll be a massive computer’s recycle bin.
And at that point who needs to burn books when Google can just press “delete”?
The internet should be a sacred spot, where ANYTHING can be said and or posted.
ReplyDeleteFor the fist time in human history, the personal thoughts and ideas can be expressed without any interference by the people that are sick with the power gene.
It is the culmination of the American forefathers respect for the 1st Amendment
No one should decide what someone else can or not say, NO ONE.
(1) Why does ANY conservative use GOOLAG, FARTBOOK, TWITTRE?
ReplyDelete(2) Where are the FAT MOUTHS who are rich thanks to "talk radio" and conservatism? Why are Limbaugh, Beck, Savage,etc,etc not MAN enough to file law suits? Why are they not filing Class Action lawsuits in defense of the Freedom that they have made so much money off? God knows they have piled up enough RICHES. All they care about is THEIR MONEY and shilling ghost written PABLUM books. Alex Jones makes big noises, why hasn't HE filed a lawsuit?
If your trough is full, why bother? The organizations you mention get paid by the government to identify and report, not to report and identify.
ReplyDeleteOh please, only the mindless morons on capital hill weren't aware that google was rigging the game!
ReplyDelete