Google reportedly blacklists prominent conservative news sites, even though a Google official denied it to U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn this summer.
This, according to the website reclaimthenet.org, which, according to its Twitter page, seeks to restore individual liberty online.
What it means to have your website’s name on that list is exclusion from Google search results.
The list of blacklisted websites reportedly includes Louder With Crowder, NewsBusters, and The Gateway Pundit.
Last month Google’s vice president for government affairs and public policy Karan Bhatia spoke about blacklisting.
“During a House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee hearing focused on alleged political censorship affecting Google’s search results, Bhatia made the claim in response to questioning from Sen. Marsha Blackburn,” the website reported.
“I feel like you all push the boundaries until your hand gets slapped,” the website quoted Blackburn as saying.
“Has Google ever blacklisted, or attempted to blacklist, a company, group, individual, or outlet from its advertising partners or its search results for political reasons?”
Bhatia reportedly said “we don’t use blacklists, whitelists to influence our search results.”
Reclaimthenet.org, though, went on to say a former Google engineer has said — on record — that the company does just that.
As reported, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas released a video recently in which Google employees discuss the tools they use to try to undermine President Donald Trump and to prevent his reelection next year.
Also, as reported, a Google software engineer with clout verbally attacked Blackburn last year, calling her “a violent thug” and a “terrorist.”
That employee, Blake Lemoine, also defended censoring Blackburn’s campaign ads on social media as she ran for the U.S. Senate last year.
The comments reportedly took place in an internal email discussion last summer. The topic of discussion was a Fox News column in which Blackburn, then a congresswoman, urged tech companies to address bias against conservatives. Blackburn has criticized tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Lemoine accused Blackburn of lying to the public and of “causing the deaths of people she claimed to protect” – referring to her work on two anti-trafficking bills, which has pushed most sex workers off Twitter.
Lemoine at the time was a technical lead on Google’s search feed, formerly known as Google Now. The feed sends information to users proactively, using personal data to predict what information users want before they search for it.
According to Lemoine’s LinkedIn profile, he works on “research pertaining to fairness and bias in machine learning.”
Lemoine indicated that he supports censorship on social media.
“Taking down libel is not censorship,” Lemoine said.
As The Star reported, Lemoine had a role in firing a conservative co-worker.
Google recently fired software engineer Mike Wacker for complaining about an anti-conservative bias within the company.
“They just basically hauled me in front of a kangaroo court, basically called into this meeting with no notice,” Wacker told the network.
“They asked me a bunch of random questions and I’m still trying to get my bearings, I’m like trying to figure out why I’m being investigated.”
Google officials, however, told Fox Business that Wacker threatened co-workers, and the firing was justified after multiple warnings.
But Wacker said the company still tolerates threats from left-leaning employees.
According to Breitbart, “Independent research acknowledged even by the anti-Trump Washington Post, found that Google search results tended to favor Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Research conducted prior to the 2016 election also found that if Google deliberately skewed its search results to favor particular candidates, it could shift the votes of undecided voters by margins of 20 percent or more.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Google Censorship” by Mike Mackenzie. CC BY 2.0.
