The whole-of-government approach to limit the spread of purported misinformation, disinformation and “malinformation,” from the White House to federal agencies and their private partners in Big Tech, think tanks and speech-policing organizations, is turning inside out.
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Jeff Bezos, founder and chairman of Amazon, congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday for an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory” after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering recommending a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in a bid to eliminate its alleged monopoly on online search, according to a court filing Tuesday.
A U.S. judge ruled in August that Google built and abused a “monopoly” by spending billions on exclusivity agreements to be the automatic search engine for browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The DOJ could force Google to sell segments of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, which place Google as its default search engine, the DOJ filing showed.
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A Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) spokesman confirmed to The Tennessee Star on Thursday that YouTube pulled its video of legendary musical artist Jon Bon Jovi talking a “distraught woman” off the ledge of a Nashville bridge, potentially saving her life.
MNPD Public Affairs Director Don Aaron confirmed to The Star the video was originally published to a YouTube channel operated by the police department, and that it was removed from the platform by YouTube. The platform did not impose additional punishment to the MNPD-operated channel beyond removal of its video, Aaron told The Star.
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Already facing a potential breakup from a devastating antitrust court ruling, Google got more bad news Wednesday when the main congressional oversight committee announced it had opened a probe into whether the search engine misled Americans about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last month.
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Google lost a major antitrust case on Monday to the Justice Department, after a federal judge ruled that it has maintained an unfair monopoly when it comes to searching for things online.
US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta ruled that Google must stop its anticompetitive behavior, where it monopolizes exclusive contracts that make it the default search engine on smartphones and computers.
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Former President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Congress could close down Google for its alleged bias and censorship.
Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall demanded in a Wednesday letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the company provide answers relating to its apparent “censorship” of the Trump assassination attempt from the tech giant’s “autocomplete” feature. Trump on “Mornings With Maria Bartiromo” said the company could face additional congressional scrutiny and possibly closure for how its handled political issues.
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Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.
Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
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Google’s search engine conspicuously left out Donald Trump in autocomplete suggestions for “assassination,” “assassination attempt” and even “president donald” Sunday, drawing criticism from social media users including X owner Elon Musk that it was censoring recent history.
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For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”
In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.
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The hearing Republicans are calling for would increase public scrutiny on Google’s AI application and potentially inherent bias.
Conservative and Republican groups nationwide are urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to hold a hearing about potential problems posed by Google Gemini, with concerns specifically about whether it could influence the 2024 presidential election.
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Google’s artificial intelligence isn’t particularly bright when it comes to evaluating publishers’ compliance with its advertising policies, if the experience of a heterodox economics blog with outsized influence is any indication.
With a megaphone from Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, both darlings of progressives in the “Occupy Wall Street” era, Naked Capitalism accused Google of making “flagrant errors” in its threats to demonetize the 18-year-old site for verboten content.
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A brand new investigation has found that Google interfered in American elections at least 41 times over the last 16 years.
Published on March 18, the Media Research Center Special Report traced election interference efforts by the world’s most popular search engine all the way back to the 2008 election of former President Barack Obama.
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More than 30 school districts in East Tennessee have joined a lawsuit first filed by Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) against social media companies, claiming that those companies are harming children.
According to WBIR, Knox, Anderson, Blount, Claiborne, Fentress, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Lenoir City, Loudon, Maryville, Oak Ridge, Oneida, and Sevier counties have joined the suit, which names eta, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, YouTube and WhatsApp as defendants.
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An analysis by the news media watchdog group AllSides Technology finds roughly 63% of stories last year on the Google News were from “left and left-leaning news sources.”
In the new analysis released Thursday, 937 stories were reviewed from Oct. 30 to Nov. 14, 2023.
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The founder of a nonprofit aimed at protecting freedom of speech online exposed Google’s connections to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a wide ranging interview with Tucker Carlson last week.
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As the threat of fake images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially play a role in the coming 2024 elections and beyond, several tech companies have pledged to use their resources to combat misinformation as a result of such technology.
According to Politico, multiple companies are planning to cooperate through a so-called “Tech Accord” dictating several key goals and methods that will be used in the fight against false AI. The companies intend to expose and debunk any “deepfake” images or videos produced by AI, through various tactics such as watermarks and automatic detection technology.
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Big Tech is back at the Supreme Court.
Appealing from a big loss they suffered at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, social media platforms are challenging Texas’ social media law that prohibits those companies from engaging in viewpoint discrimination when curating their platforms.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti revealed on Wednesday that a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general announced a $700 million agreement with Google to settle their lawsuit alleging the technology company engaged in anticompetitive practices to stifle competitors to its Google Play Store.
Skrmetti stated that “Google will no longer profit from the inflated app costs it forced through its abuse of market power,” and said the settlement “will reduce app prices and increase consumer choices on the Android platform. Our office is proud to protect consumers, secure $700 million in financial relief, and be a part of this bipartisan effort to ensure one of the most powerful companies in the world follows the law.”
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Dr. Robert Epstein, founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies joined Monday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and revealed the shocking truth about how Google manipulates search engines to change voting behavior. Dr. Epstein, an expert in psychology, shares his extensive research on the subject and exposes the impact of Google’s control over” ephemeral content.” With the ability to shift millions of votes, Google poses a significant threat to the integrity of elections. However, Dr. Epstein offers a solution to stop their manipulations and reveals how his pioneering system, AmericasDigitalShield.com, is poised to protect the 2024 election. Join us as we delve into this eye-opening conversation and uncover the truth behind Google’s influence on our democracy. TRANSCRIPT Michael Patrick Leahy: 12:20 PM; broadcasting live from our studios in downtown Nashville. Original All Star panelist Crom Carmichael in-studio with us; on the newspaper line right now. Dr. Robert Epstein, Ph.D. in psychology; also an expert on how Google manipulates search engines to change voting outcome. Welcome Dr. Epstein. Thanks for joining us today. Robert Epstein: Sure. It’s my pleasure. Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, you’re the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies…
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Google lost an antitrust case against popular video game maker Epic Games on Monday, with a jury ruling that the tech giant has an illegal monopoly in its app store.
Epic, which makes Fortnite, alleged that Google stifles competition and imposes excessively costly charges on app makers using its Google Play Store. Epic also alleged that Google illegally connected its app store to its billing service, compelling developers to use both.
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A bipartisan group of senators is about to take Big Tech CEOs to task on Jan. 31, 2024, by having them publicly address their failures to protect kids online. And the CEOs need to! The harms social media poses to children are well documented and, at this point, indisputable—even by the companies themselves.
YouTube admits that it hosts harmful content for children and even calls for legislation to address the problems it helps create. YouTube’s CEO indicated as much when he published his “principled approach for children and teenagers.”
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Two months after crushing a rushed effort to impeach him, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is plotting a dual tsunami designed to politically punish those in the Legislature who tried to remove him from office while putting Google, President Joe Biden and other liberal foes into his legal crosshairs.
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A new search engine launched titled “Luxxle” prides itself on giving users more power when it comes to searching up content and more privacy.
“Luxxle is a search engine that provides a platform for publications of all size and voice to be discovered,” Luxxle communications director Molly Koweek told Just the News in an exclusive interview. “It’s a search engine that remains unbiased which is something you don’t have right now with the big search engines.”
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Republican presidential candidates’ websites are practically nonexistent in generic Google searches for the party’s 2024 bench, and not much better for the most viable primary challenger to Democratic President Biden, according to tests by a watchdog and Just the News.
For the conservative Media Research Center and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), it’s unmistakable evidence of Google’s bias for the incumbent just as primary voters are seeking more information about the candidates on the debate stage.
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State Representative Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale), chair of the Arizona House Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech, held the first of a series of hearings last week investigating the impact of big tech’s election interference. The first half of the four-hour long session featured testimony by Harvard educated academic Dr. Robert Epstein, who discovered how Google influences election results. The second half consisted of testimony by First Amendment attorney James Kerwin of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, who discussed where the law is in regards to officials pressuring big tech about posts. He went over what then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office emailed to big tech during the last election, and suggested legislation the Arizona Legislature could propose to curtail the officials.
Kolodin said during the hearing, “It is not acceptable for the government to censor free speech simply because it acts through the private sector.” He warned that the country is in the beginning of a nascent police state … nascent totalitarian society … I go to grassroots meetings where people are afraid to speak … afraid they will be arrested.” Kolodin said some presenters who were invited to speak at the hearing dropped out due to fear.
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Google broke ground on its new data center in Mesa on Wednesday, as Arizona continues to bring in businesses to the outskirts of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
The $600 million facility will create an estimated 1,200 construction jobs, but it’s unknown how many jobs it will have once the facility is up and running.
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In an effort to attract students and the general public alike, Pennsylvania’s higher education system will partner with Google to offer certificate programs that demonstrate their skills to potential employers.
Students can earn a certificate as they get college credit within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and the public can earn a certificate through non-credit courses and workshops without enrolling in PASSHE.
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Google announced on Monday the expansion of its footprint in Central Ohio, committing to invest another $1.7 billion between its data centers in New Albany, Columbus, and Lancaster.
Earlier this year, the firm announced that it would construct two new data centers in central Ohio, one in Lancaster and the other on South High Street in South Columbus, in addition to its existing data center complex in New Albany, bringing Google’s total investment in the state to over $2 billion. According to Google, as of May, it has generated nearly $13 billion in economic activity for businesses and nonprofits.
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Google has long been accused of suppressing conservative speech, but a new study shows the internet search engine giant is playing favorites with Democrats in the 2024 presidential race.
By typing in just one query, “Presidential campaign websites,” Google returned only Democratic Party candidates — some of whom are not even running in 2024, according to Media Research Center, the media watchdog and parent of conservative news site NewsBusters, which is “committed to exposing and combating liberal media bias.”
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Google revealed new tools and safeguards to assist users in managing personal data, privacy and online safety, in an announcement on Thursday.
The updated tools will enable users to remove personal information from Google search results such as “personal phone number, home address or email,” according to a blog post by the tech giant on Thursday. Google will also give users the choice to receive alerts about new search results that include their personal contact data, simplifying the removal process.
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Louisiana federal Judge Terry A. Doughty shocked Americans with his July 4th restraining order against Biden’s digital team which was supposed to be fighting “disinformation” but was in reality just banning views online it didn’t like.
Doughty’s opinion is a jaw dropping expose of how White House staff bullied Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to remove content about election fraud, COVID concerns and other matters of public interest in blatant violation of the First Amendment. Governmental actors cannot demand that others do what they cannot under the Constitution, just as you can’t have proxies break the law for you. Yet that’s exactly what Biden officials did and that’s exactly what Judge Doughty stopped.
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Google quietly updated its privacy policy over the long July 4 holiday weekend to expand what it can do with user data, namely improve its artificial-intelligence abilities, according to tech blog Gizmodo.
The new policy replaced the word “language” with “AI” in a section referring to the “publicly available information” that Google uses to train its “models” for the benefit of users, Gizmodo says, citing the publicly recorded change log.
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A drag queen who uses the name “Peaches Christ” lashed out against ‘bigoted Christians” in a social media post after Google removed its affiliation from his previously scheduled performance during the company’s “pride” events.
As CNBC reported, Google appeared to distance itself from its original plans to sponsor drag queen Joshua Grannell’s performance at a San Francisco LGBTQ bar as part of its “pride” month events after a petition circulating among the tech giant’s employees expressed opposition to its anti-Christian theme.
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The disputed 2020 election now appears in the rearview mirror for YouTube, which is now determining what users can see relevant to the next election.
The Alphabet-owned, video-sharing site and Google sibling has censored at least two videos, and may be throttling a third, featuring Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban on questioning the “integrity” of the last presidential election, saying it accomplished little relative to the potential harm it caused.
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Tech giant Google has reportedly distanced itself from a ‘pride month’ drag performance it had planned to sponsor in San Francisco after several hundred employees signed a petition expressing opposition to the event, arguing it discriminates against the Christian faith.
According to a report Tuesday at CNBC, a drag queen known as “Peaches Christ” was scheduled to perform at Beaux, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco, at a “pride” event sponsored by Google.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law on Tuesday a bill that creates a Digital Bill of Rights for Floridians.
Senate Bill 262 sponsored by State Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, creates the Digital Bill of Rights, which includes the right to control personal data and the right to delete, confirm, and access personal data on social media platforms.
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The Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition backed by companies such as Google and Meta, released statements and a study arguing against the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), stating it would primarily benefit conservative media outlets.
The California Assembly passed the CJPA on Thursday, a bill that compels companies like Google and Meta to pay publications for news links they post on their platforms, which would disproportionately enrich “disinformation giants like Fox News and the New York Post,” according to the Chamber of Progress. The coalition lists Google and Meta as corporate partners on its website and the Chamber of Progress’s founder and CEO, Adam Kovacevich, formerly headed Google’s U.S. policy strategy and external affairs team, according to its website.
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A Pennsylvania lawmaker wants all content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to be labeled and is drafting legislation to that end.
State Representative Chris Pielli (D-West Chester) insisted consumers should expect to know whether they are accessing human-created or electronically produced information. He said people will have a harder time fulfilling this expectation as AI becomes more advanced and commonly used.
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Facebook parent company Meta took down a post relating to research on the liberal bias on the internet shared by the Maricopa County Republican Committee on Friday.
According to the county, the post shared support for Dr. Robert Epstein’s research on Google’s liberal bias and linked to mygoogleresearch.com, a website featuring his works and requesting donations. The post also related to the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), founded by Epstein. However, Facebook claimed the link violates community standards.
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According to multiple Thursday reports, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSs) is filing a lawsuit against several Silicon Valley titans of industry, claiming that social media is having a debilitating effect on its students.
The Frantz Law Group of California, working with the Tennessee law firm Lewis Thomason, filed the lawsuit the week of May 8, according to ClarksvilleNow.com. The defendants in the suit include Facebook, Google, Instagram, Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, WhatsApp and YouTube.
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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida fired back at Republican critics of his efforts to rein in big businesses, calling them “corporatists.”
DeSantis signed legislation May 2 that prohibited state agencies and local governments from considering Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors when issuing bonds, barred banks from considering “social credit” when making loan decisions and prohibited discrimination on the basis of political, social or religious ideology. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump have criticized DeSantis, a potential 2024 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, over the feud with Disney that started after DeSantis signed parental rights legislation in March 2022 over the company’s opposition.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin joined Virginia education leaders and Google executives in announcing a new cybersecurity training program with Northern Virginia Community College.
The announcement was made at an event Thursday at the NOVA campus in Alexandria. The new program will offer a Google Career Certificate in cybersecurity, which is proponents say is an emerging technical field.
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Google announced on Wednesday the addition of two new data centers in central Ohio.
According to the firm, one of the centers will be constructed in Lancaster and the other on South High Street in South Columbus, bringing Google’s total investment to date in the state to over $2 billion. According to Google, it has generated nearly $13 billion in economic activity for businesses and nonprofits.
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Over 200 former employees of federal surveillance agencies have since joined the corporate ranks of Big Tech companies in recent years, thus increasing the likelihood of systematic censorship of conservative accounts by such platforms.
According to the Daily Caller, the four social media companies Google, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have recruited 248 former employees from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as proven by searches of the professional job listing and networking platform LinkedIn. The bulk of these hires were made between 2017 and 2022, with some of the former federal employees moving on to top executive positions within the social media companies.
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The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT Act), S.686, contains language that could be used to shut down any website or app with more than 1 million users that challenges the “reported result of a Federal election” — threatening websites and apps that allow free speech on their platforms including Truth Social and Rumble, not just TikTok, the supposed reason for the legislation.
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Google News heavily skewed in favor of left-leaning media outlets—both in the news articles featured on its homepage and in the search results for specific topics—in five of the days leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, according to an AllSides study Google criticized as “deeply flawed” in comments to The Daily Signal.
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Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki will be stepping down after a nine year stint as head of the company, Wojcicki announced in a blog post Thursday.
Wojcicki initially joined Google, Youtube’s parent company, nearly 25 years ago and worked on several projects for the company — including co-creating Google’s Image Search function and advertising technology — before joining Youtube in 2014 as its CEO, according to the blog post. Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan will be taking over as the new CEO of YouTube, while Wojcicki will step into an advisory role at YouTube’s parent companies, Google and Alphabet.
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Big Tech giant Google on Monday announced Bard, the company’s new artificial intelligence product, in a bid to compete with ChatGPT.
“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard,” reads a blog post from the company. “And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
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The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has an unfair dominance over the digital ad market.
As reported by the New York Post, the federal lawsuit could be filed as soon as Tuesday against Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. The suit will target Google’s lucrative advertising business, which accounts for 80 percent of Google’s overall revenue; in 2023, Google is projected to make at least $73.8 billion from advertising alone.
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