What’s more, Barack Obama exposed for all who care to see the fact that we have a two-tiered system of justice in America: One system for powerful, wealthy elitists who toe the establishment line, and one for the vast majority of Americans.
That second tier metes out punishment in spades, while those who are protected by the first tier can literally break laws with impunity, knowing they’re never going to be held accountable for it.
Like Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
According to former Google engineer Mike Wacker, Pichai lied to Congress during recent testimony, given under oath, when the CEO claimed the company doesn’t intervene to manually alter search results.
Writing at Medium in a post titled, “Google’s Manual Interventions in Search Results,” Wacker claims that Pichai was being dishonest when he told lawmakers, “We don’t manually intervene on any particular search result.”
Moreover, Wacker noted that Pichai’s comment was in response to a question from Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who inquired about why pictures of POTUS Donald Trump were returned under the image search term “idiot.”
The CEO said that Google’s search process is automated and based on ranked results including such characteristics as “relevance, freshness, popularity,” and more. Specifically, Pichai stated unequivocally and on the record that no, the tech behemoth does not intervene to change certain search queries and results.
However, Wacker wrote that just a few days after the CEO gave his sworn testimony, Slate correspondent April Glaser searched for the term “abortion” on YouTube — a Google-owned entity that uses Google algorithms — and expressed her unhappiness with the results, even composing an article about them.
Wacker wrote:
She would later receive a response from a YouTube spokesperson. However, this answer was different from the answer that Sundar Pichai delivered to Rep. Lofgren. Instead of explaining how search works and how these results were produced by an objective, automated process, the spokesperson “stressed that the company is working to provide more credible news content from its search and discovery algorithms.”
Upon reading that, Wacker decided to begin his own investigation. “I eventually found the smoking gun: the exact change where Google had altered the search results for abortion. My initial reaction was a mix of excitement and shock,” he wrote.
He then described how YouTube actively manipulates search results, noting:
To reference the infamous phrase “alternative facts,” the change essentially used an alternative algorithm that delivers alternative search results. A special file named youtube_controversial_query_blacklist could be used to manually trigger this alternative algorithm. For any search or query that matched an entry on that blacklist, YouTube would blacklist the normal search results, switching over to the alternative search results instead.
In other words, certain terms were placed on an editorial blacklist — a list that has to be compiled manually, of course, and then inserted into the algorithm programming for reference during searches.
Wacker said the “smoking gun” he found “was a change that added two entries to that blackout: ‘abortion’ and ‘abortions.’
“As a result of this change, searches for those terms displayed the alternative search results,” he said, adding that the blacklist was updated with the new terms within hours of Slate’s Glaser contacting YouTube, via email, to express her concerns.
In short, Wacker concluded that Pichai intentionally mislead Congress — but, unlike longtime Trump supporter and confidante, Roger Stone, who was charged with that crime, Pichai hasn’t been rousted out of a slumber in the wee morning hours by a heavily armed FBI SWAT team.
Because he’s part of that ‘protected’ class, apparently.
Read more about how the tech giants are censoring search results at TechGiants.news and Censorship.news.
Sources include: