A new study released by the Media Research Center (MRC) found that Google has interfered with elections 41 times since 2008, harming candidates who challenged those on the political left without exception and even acting against some Democrats who challenged their preferred candidates.
In 2008, for example, MRC found that Google censored Hillary Clinton-supporting bloggers, labeling their websites as “spam,” then blaming that on an “error” in their anti-spam filters. Google CEO Eric Schmidt personally endorsed Barack Obama two weeks before the election, claiming that Google was “officially neutral.” Google did host a post-inauguration party for Obama and at least 55 of its executives and employees became Obama advisers and political appointees.
Google has always claimed neutrality and commonly blames any bias on its algorithms or errors, but the data paint a picture of always erring to benefit one side, the political left, MRC found.
In 2011 as Republican primaries were underway, Google refused to remove search results referring to Rick Santorum in vile terms related to an alleged gay sex act that had surged to the top of its algorithm in what was then called a “bomb” prank. At the time, Google claimed it doesn’t remove content from its search results unless it is illegal or violates the guidelines.
What Google said, however, is contradicted by its statements from 2012 that it had been adjusting its algorithm to get rid of “bomb” pranks for five years and had done so to remove results that associated both George W. Bush and Obama’s names with the term “miserable failure.”
Google’s Director of Responsible Innovation Jen Gennai was caught by the Veritas Project on hidden camera after former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, vowing Google would work to “prevent the next Trump situation.” CFO Ruth Borat said during an internal meeting shortly after the 2020 election that Google would use its “great strength and resources and reach” to advance its values, according to the MRC report.
Dr. Robert Epstein, a data scientist and research psychologist who was once the editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, said that Google’s efforts to censor negative information about Ms. Clinton while not censoring negative information about President Trump during the 2016 campaign may have shifted as many as 2.5 million votes to Ms. Clinton that year.
Dr. Epstein termed this kind of censorship the Search Engine Manipulation Effect and has demonstrated it in “dozens of controlled experiments” in the United States and other countries since 2016.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019, Dr. Epstein said:
“Data I’ve collected since 2016 show that Google displays content to the American public that is biased in favor on one political party—a party I happen to like, but that’s irrelevant. No private company should have either the right or the power to manipulate large populations without their knowledge.”
In 2016, Google hid search suggestions in the United States related to Ms. Clinton, crime, and possible indictment, instead suggesting “crime reform” or “crisis” when people typed in “Hillary Clinton cri.” When users searched “crooked” during the time when President Trump coined the nickname “crooked Hillary,” Google suggested “crooked smile” or “crooked duck” instead, despite Google Trends showing a clear interest in the “crooked Hillary” term.
By 2020, Dr. Epstein found, Google sent reminders to vote exclusively to Democrats and was accused of blocking emails from GOP campaigns to Gmail users. Dr. Epstein estimated that a “bare minimum” of six million votes could have been shifted from President Trump to then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020, a massive amount that would have handed the Electoral College to President Trump in a landslide.
As many as 15 million votes could have been shifted, Dr. Epstein said.
MRC also detailed several ways in which Google has blacklisted and demonetized conservative news websites like NewsBusters, Breitbart, MRCTV, and RedState, omitting them from search results when they readily appeared on Bing, Yahoo! and other smaller search engines.
Google’s AI chatbots also pose new threats to future elections starting in 2024, according to the MRC report. Google’s Bard has downplayed information about Biden scandals and omitted information in 2023 about challengers to President Biden.
The report called on Congress to investigate Google for “coordinating with government to violate freedom of speech” and on state legislatures to pass laws designating Google a “common carrier” prohibited from engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
Finally, MRC pointed out that the public can use Google alternatives, which it found to produce less biased results.
In response to the study, Google told NTD: “There is absolutely nothing new here – just a recycled list of baseless, inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties and many that failed in the courts. Politicians on the left have a long history of making similar claims too. We have a clear business incentive to keep everyone using our products, so we have no desire to make them biased or inaccurate and have safeguards in place to ensure this. Numerous conservatives have been particularly successful in using our platforms to spread their message to a wide audience.”
Google also disputed key findings in the MRC report, citing fact-checkers who found no evidence of ideological bias and that Google’s systems reward reputable reporting.
