What Google does with its search results should surprise no one — here is the Daily Caller Foundation’s Peter Hasson at The Daily Signal:
Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in search results as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.
The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out as outlets to potentially bury in search results, the communications reveal.
Trump’s election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.
Communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.
“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his co-workers to reduce their visibility in search results.
“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.
“I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources—because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued.
“Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years—demographics will be on our side.”
Some of Byer’s colleagues expressed concern that manipulating search results could backfire and suggested alternative measures.
One Google engineer, Uri Dekel, identified himself as a Clinton supporter but argued that manipulating search results was the wrong route to take.
Read more: The Daily Signal
Image credit: www.thedailysignal.com.
