In predictable fashion, one of the world’s largest tech platforms and most profitable Internet advertising companies continues to have a problem with honesty when it comes to questions over its manipulation of search data.
And ordinarily, while lying about such a thing wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for the company, a Google representative recently told the lie in Congress — under oath — which is a violation of the law.
As Breitbart News reports, Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice president for governmental affairs and public policy, denied to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that the tech giant uses search engine blacklists during a hearing on Tuesday though recently leaked emails have exposed Google for doing that very thing.
The Daily Caller obtained access to since-leaked documents in April proving the company “is engaged in an unprecedented censorship conspiracy targeting conservatives, Christians, and others who don’t conform to official deep state doctrines to deny reality,” NewsTarget reported:
According to Google documents, now unsealed, Google’s “Trust & Safety” team actively monitors the websites that are added to Google’s “XPA news blacklist,” ensuring that these websites don’t show up in any Google “search feature” or “news product.”
But in response to a line of questioning this week from Blackburn, Bhatia denied that Google, which also owns YouTube, employs blacklists.
“We don’t use blacklists [or] whitelists to influence our search results,” the VP said.
As Blackburn persisted, Bhatia repeated the denial. “As I said, per your previous question, we do not utilize blacklists or whitelists in our search results to favor political outcomes … that’s not — doesn’t happen.”
But what about the internal Google docs discovered by The Daily Caller?
“The deceptive_news domain blacklist is going to be used by many search features to filter problematic sites that violate the good neighbor and misrepresentation policies,” one of the Google documents clearly states, indicating the type of manual select protocol of web censorship that Google CEO Sundar Pichai also denied took place during congressional testimony in December.
“The purpose of the blacklist will be to bar the sites from surfacing in any Search feature or news product,” the Google document continues. “It will not cause a demotion in the organic search results or de-index them altogether.” (Related: Google BUSTED: Tucker Carlson reveals how company mobilized to elect HILLARY.)
What’s it going to take to hold these people accountable?
In addition, Breitbart News — citing Pinchai’s testimony and denial — noted in January:
Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”
The terms as added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries, a document that contains a number of terms and phrases that the company has deemed ‘sensitive’ or ‘controversial’ (i.e. conservative). Other terms, according to the leaked internal discussion thread, include “abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg,” Breitbart reported.
“We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said a Google employee who leaked the document on condition of anonymity. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”
This is just part of a wider pattern of Left-wing political activity that Google and its various subsidiaries have engaged in. What’s more, despite the fact that a number of media sites have reported on the fact that Google does, indeed, manipulate, censor, or ban particular content searched for by users, the company’s executives nevertheless feel empowered to lie under oath to members of Congress.
There are two reasons for that: 1) Google spends a lot of money on congressional races; and 2) Google’s executives are never held accountable for being dishonest to lawmakers, even under oath — which only begets more dishonesty.
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