Oddbean

Google Censors Freedom This post presents evidence that Google promotes an agenda of centralized control through systematic censorship on its search, email, video, app store, and ad platforms of ideas promoting decentralized personal responsibility and anything critical of government power. Political Bias Google directly promoted the US military’s bombing operations in Syria in a positive light on the front page of its search engine before the user even types in a search query, while Google simultaneously scores lucrative cloud contract deals with the same military. [1] Google isn’t just lobbying for deals, they’ve literally become the corporate extension of the government. Over 53 employees have been part of a revolving door between Google and Obama’s white house staff, which is more than any other company in the United States. With Google employees joining white house staff, or transitioning the other way after Obama’s term. Are we honestly supposed to believe Google search is unbiased? In analysis from data firm Gotcha SEO, in a study of 50 controversial terms, only 5% of the results favored conservative websites. [5] With 63.8% Neutral, 31.8% Left, and only 5% Right websites, we are expected to believe that conservatives are just “bad as SEO”. 77% of conservative emails are labeled spam But yet this censorship and bias is prevalent even in Gmail. Research published by North Carolina State University found clear bias in how Gmail decides what is spam. Their study created 102 fake email accounts and subscribed to 2 Presidential, 78 Senate, and 156 House candidates email lists. These researchers found that under 10.12% of left-leaning politicians’ emails were marked as spam, while as 77.2% of right-leaning ones were “spam” that never made it to the primary inbox. [8] Despite Google having such clear support for Democrats, they are exceptionally skilled at tax avoidance. The Irish Times reported on Google avoiding paying tax on $75 billion in profits through complex offshore money transfers that avoid both US and EU tax, and thus Google’s effective tax rate on these profits is 0%. [4a] Reuters reports on an earlier similar abusive transfer of $23 billion sent to the tax haven Bermuda. [4b]. Even left-leaning researchers find clear evidence of Google’s email bias. The Markup did a study with extensive statistical analysis of 5,417 emails from 172 different political groups during election season. They found clear bias in the treatment of which campaigns’ emails got labeled spam or promotions. For example Tulsi Gabbard got a mere 2.22% of her emails in the primary inbox, while other candidates saw 12, 46, or 63%. Elizabeth Warren who is highly critical of Google’s monopolistic power, coincidentally did not get a single email in the primary inbox. [9] The Verge reports on presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who also promotes breaking up Google, faced similar censorship when her Google Ads account suddenly was suspended right as traffic to her website spiked immediately following a televised debate. This ended up depriving her campaign of millions of dollars in revenue from the organic traffic she was receiving. [14] Tailored Propaganda Google does not just censor equally for every user, but tailors their propaganda to the individual’s search and email history. Google through their Jigsaw division has partnered with Moonshot CVE to offer paid search engine manipulation services for the US government. If the Department of Defense is the client, then at a minimum using Google search to research anything related to foreign policy would be a direct conflict of interest. Moonshot CVE claims that this search engine manipulation is just to stop extremists which promote violence. [12] However, from documents leaked to Wikileaks, we’ve learned that it’s secretly the US government that incites and strokes violent uprisings. For example the Syrian civil war, in which millions of people died, was sparked in part from the US government purposefully igniting tensions between Sunni and Shite Muslim ethnic groups to create instability that would overthrow the president of Syria Bashir Assad. According to leaked Wikileaks cables, William Roebuck, the US diplomat in Damascus, suggested the US should “stroke these tensions and play on these fears” when writing back to Washington right before the war broke out in 2006. [2] But yet Google’s front page promotes an entirely different narrative on Syria as they put John Kerry’s statements below the search bar. And paints anyone who dares to question their narrative is labeled as a “conspiracy theorist”. Not only does Google have an interest in manipulating the search results, but their partner Moonshot CVE openly admits to storing in a database the IP address and location of those searching for controversial information. These databases are then used to target redirection techniques to websites that the government has deemed to be “less extreme”. [12] The idea of customized government propaganda administered through personalized monitoring should provide strong motivation for the use of a trusted VPN or Tor. NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden called Google search completely unuseable because of it’s anti-privacy stance. While Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company will develop machine learning and A.I. to combat “misinformation” shared by “low-information voters” and conspiracy theories. The issue is who gets to decide what is true and what defines a “conspiracy”? This pretext could be used to censor true information that Google’s paying customers (governments and large corporations) don’t want heard. One example of this is the Federal Reserve creates money, which causes inflation and your salary to be worth less. But this banking system doesn’t affect everyone equally, because the banks and their wealthy clients get access to the freshly minted money first at lower interest rates, while the poor can not effectively hedge against inflation with assets that rise from printed money like stocks or real estate. This is the type of criticism which was laid out in James Corbett’s ‘Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve’, which got millions of views and rose to the top of Youtube’s search as the 1 video for the keywords “Federal Reserve”. At least it was on top of Youtube’s search, until MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted out that this video was promoting “conspiracy theories” and the video was downgraded immediately from being the number one video for the search terms to not even showing up. [3] However, Chris Hayes did not provide a single argument as to why the video was wrong or inaccurate. How much your content strays from Google’s view will determine how your emails are received. A different libertarian leaning news site found its email list delivery rate to be half for Gmail what it achieves sending to non-Gmail accounts. [10] Cryptocurrency Banned While Cryptocurrency offers a way to escape from the tyranny of central bank inflation, Google fundamentally disagrees. Forbes reports on Google overwhelming banning crypto apps and Youtube channels well beyond what it does for other industries. [15] For example Google delisted apps for the popular cryptocurrency wallet Metamask from both the Google Play store and the Chrome web store. [16] Mobile App Daily comments on Google banning almost all crypto mining apps without any type of warning. [17] And industry leaders CoinTelegraph and CoinDesk both had their news apps removed from the Play Store. [18] Many Crypto Youtube channels were suspended or banned even those that just promote basic Bitcoin education. Some of these had millions of views or subscribers and were done without warning. While some of these channels have been restored, it still damaged their fanbases to have outages. [19] Locked Out of Accounts Suspension can get you locked out of all accounts that use a Gmail. Jordan Peterson is a popular conservative Youtuber that some consider controversial including Google, who suspended his account without warning. While having his Youtube channel removed hurt his business, the real crippling part was his prior reliance on using the Gmail associated with that account. Peterson explains in an interview with the Daily Caller: “I’ve had that account for the last, say, 15 years. All of my correspondence is in that account. It’s hundreds of thousands of emails from people all over the world.” [6] Not only did Peterson have a difficult time reaching out to his personal and business relationships, but all of his accounts like banking, medical, and other websites were linked to that email. This is the danger of using Gmail or other centralized email providers because then if they censor you, then you’re locked out of everything. Cybersecurity Video influencer the “Mental Outlaw” points out that some listeners may think they are immune from censorship similar to what Jordan Peterson experienced because they aren’t public personas with a Youtube channel, but Google often suspends accounts for even posting comments and replies to videos that they deem inappropriate. Therefore Mental Outlaw warns it’s quite possible that you could get your email suspended over some comment or reply you consider to be relatively mundane and thus be locked out of all your accounts that used that email to verify. [13] Conclusion A reliance on Google products (including even Gmail) will curb your ability to access ideas, learn, and ultimately brainwash you to obey centralized authority which does not have your interests at heart. This trained obedience could lead to a direct decline in your finances, health, and ability to connect with others. Sources: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/google-censors-freedom/index.html