We've known for some time about various social media companies, internet providers, and search engines laying their thumbs on the scale where political discourse is concerned, and we've likewise known for some time that those scales generally tip to the left.
Now we see, from the Media Research Center, a report detailing precisely how search engine giant Google has been tipping those scales — and that they have been doing so since at least 2008.
MRC Free Speech America researchers compiled 41 times Google was caught interfering in U.S. elections, beginning in 2008, intensifying in 2016 and continuing into 2024. MRC researchers found carefully crafted studies and numerous reports (from 2008 through February 2024) that have consistently demonstrated the tech behemoth’s election meddling.
Amazingly — or perhaps not — not all of the meddling was aimed at Republicans:
In 2008, Google endorsed the radical, young Sen. Obama and censored support for Sen. Clinton. Journalist Simon Owens reported at the time that the tech giant suspended the accounts of writers who wrote pro-Clinton blogs critical of Obama. “[N]early all of [the censored bloggers] had three things in common,” Owens wrote. “Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.”
Also, the narrow win by Donald Trump in the 2016 election was a shock to some at Google, as they had done their best to edge Hillary Clinton into office; that election may have been much more decidedly in Trump's favor were it not for Googles' bias, combined with their nearly-total lock on information access in the internet.
In 2016, Google employed both its algorithm and its “partners” in futile attempts to push Clinton over the finish line. One study by SourceFed found that Google’s algorithm excluded potentially damaging autofill results for searches inquiring about Clinton’s alleged crimes and possible indictment during her scandalous tenure as Secretary of State. Google hid her flaws and instead suggested that users search for things like “Hillary Clinton crime reform” and “Hillary Clinton India” but did not do the same for other contentious searches for candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Their interference in the 2020 election, to this day perhaps the most contentious and most debated election in American history, was likewise aimed not solely at Republicans:
In 2020, Google picked its favored and disfavored candidates and continued its biased censorship spree. During the 2020 Democratic primary, The tech giant disabled then-presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard’s Google Ads account just as she became the most searched candidate following the first Democratic Party primary debate.
And:
The tech giant was also accused of blocking GOP fundraising emails from reaching users’ inboxes and sending out “go vote” reminders only to Democrats. These, and similar methods of election interference, likely contributed to the at least six million votes that Google shifted in 2020, according to research.
Google has been scrutinized for tipping the scales in other matters as well:
See Related: Even WaPo Admits Google's AI Bots Are an Absolute Disaster
Even tech titan Elon Musk has weighed in.
This article understates the magnitude of the problem – Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2024
This is to be expected when their censorship (aka “Trust & Safety”) teams are have far left political views. https://t.co/y36yzdzIUQ
Google is, of course, a private company, and one would presume that as such, they are entitled to hire whomever they please and set their own editorial policies. But Google, as previously noted, has a near-monopoly on the search engine business, and that spills over into advertising placements and "suggested" content. There are alternatives, such as DuckDuckGo, but most folks aren't interested enough to seek them out, which makes the bias of Google and its subsidiaries, like Google's Gemini AI, all the more concerning. That's also what makes the publicizing of reports like this one all the more important; the more people know, the better judgment they can exercise in their news and at the ballot box.
You can read the entire Media Research Center Report here.
While we're on the topic of people being able to freely seek out information: If you're fed up with the Big Internet having their thumbs on the scale, determining what they think you should be allowed to read, then there's something you can do about it. Just upgrade to a VIP account, and you'll have access to a great deal of uncensored news and opinion. VIP status will open a wealth of stories and podcasts here at RedState as well as all of our sister sites in Townhall Media: PJ Media, Twitchy, Hot Air, Bearing Arms, and Townhall.com, and you can be assured that those stories are not tipped in any direction by any outside search engine. Use promo code SAVEAMERICA for a 50% discount.
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