Lawmakers are calling on Google, Facebook and other social media companies to turn over memos related to their business interests as Congress applies more pressure on big tech, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Read the full story
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined other senators in asking YouTube’s parent company Google to expand its copyright infringement technology to more members of the creative community, including those in Nashville.
Read the full story
Google reportedly blacklists prominent conservative news sites, even though a Google official denied it to U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn this summer.
Read the full story
Our friend James O’Keefe and his team at Project Veritas have produced another bombshell Silicon Valley expose, this time with the help of Google whistleblower Zachary Vorhies.
Read the full story
More than 600 Google employees said they “refuse” to be “complicit” in potential cloud computing work for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to a petition.
Read the full story
A former Google employee alleges that the tech giant discriminates against pregnant women. The woman made the accusation in a memo obtained by Motherboard.
Read the full story
President Donald Trump dinged Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday after a company insider claimed the tech giant is preparing to foil the president’s reelection bid.
Read the full story
In the wake of the dumpster fire that was the Mueller hearings this week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s reputation was left in ashes, the Democrats are covered in soot, and the Russian collusion fairytale is toast. The Democrats’ impeachment hopes are also dead, whether they choose to believe it or not. But the question of election meddling remains very much a vital topic of discussion, just not in the way Democrats and the leftist corporate media would like.
Read the full story
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google over allegations that the tech giant violated her right to free speech.
Read the full story
by Emina Melonic Although many people don’t see it or refuse to acknowledge it, we are living in a mangled version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. There are technological and morally dubious (at best!) forces that control the flow of information we see and can release into the world. Facebook, Twitter, and Google – our current rendition of “The Big Three” – rightfully have been accused of censorship, as example after example comes to light. Yet, even as more is revealed with each new example, nothing seems to be done to change the situation. The rest of the population – i.e., the users – are powerless to do anything about it because the structure of all social media companies allows rhem to operate under the guise of privatization. If the company is private, then logically it would follow that we have no right to criticize their company policies. Add to that the fact that their services, mainly, are free to users, and complaints are often met with dismissive charges of ingratitude. And yet, users have no genuine choice because these are the platforms that amount to today’s public square. We have no choice because the primary way of…
Read the full story
by Rachel del Guidice Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called out a Google vice president Tuesday afternoon for the tech giant’s decision to dissolve an advisory council on artificial intelligence after inviting Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James to join the panel. Cruz asked Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, about the worldwide internet company’s disbanding of the advisory council after Google employees objected to including the head of the leading conservative think tank. “You worked at The Heritage Foundation, I believe you said,” Cruz told Bhatia during a hearing held by the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution. “Do you consider The Heritage Foundation to be some fringe organization?” Bhatia replied that he considered Heritage to be a conservative organization. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called out a Google vice president Tuesday afternoon for the tech giant’s decision to dissolve an advisory council on artificial intelligence after inviting Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James to join the panel. Cruz asked Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, about the worldwide internet company’s disbanding of the advisory council after Google employees objected to including the head of the leading conservative think tank. “You…
Read the full story
by Whitney Tipton Tech billionaire Peter Thiel said Sunday that the FBI and CIA should investigate Google for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese military over U.S. interests. Thiel, one of the most high-profile Trump supporters in the tech industry, criticized Google’s work with the Chinese during a speech to the inaugural National Conservatism Conference Sunday evening in Washington, D.C., Axios reported. “How many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI? Does Google’s senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?” Thiel asked. “Is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the U.S. military,” he continued. “Because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn’t go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?” Thiel suggested his questions warrant the attention of federal investigators. “These questions need to be asked by the FBI, by the CIA, and I’m not quite sure how to put this, I would like them to be asked in a not so excessively gentle manner,” he added. Thiel sits on the board of Facebook,…
Read the full story
by Chris White Two of the country’s staunchest big tech critics are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate social media companies’ perceived censorship practices. Facebook, Google and Twitter exercise lots of influence on Americans and they also use their tools to censor some content while amplifying others, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote in a letter Monday to the FTC. They are asking the agency to open a public probe into the impact such policies have on people. “Companies that are this big and that have the potential to threaten democracy this much should not be allowed to curate content entirely without any transparency,” they wrote. “These companies can greatly influence democratic outcomes, yet they have not accountability to voters.” They added: “They are not even accountable to their own customers because nobody knows how theses companies curate content.” Cruz and Hawley are two of the biggest Republican critics of Google and Facebook, both of which are consistently accused of discriminating against conservative content. Hawley, for his part, introduced the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act in June that aims to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives online companies immunity only if they…
Read the full story
by Rachael Brovard In a rare moment of bipartisanship last week, Democrats and Republicans joined hands to make a small, but fundamental change to our immigration system. Not to provide critically needed updates or wholesale reforms, but, rather, to toss a sop to the billionaires of Big Tech. Thanks to furious lobbying from Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett Packard, Equifax, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, IBM, Cisco, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Eric Schmidt of Google’s group FWD.us, among others, the House this week passed H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019. The bill, which was supported by 140 Republicans and 224 Democrats, removes the per-country cap for employment-based immigration visas. In other words, it makes it easier for the tech giants and billionaires of Silicon Valley to hire cheap foreign labor over highly skilled Americans. Current law requires that no country receive more than 7 percent of the employment-based green cards issued each year. This ensures that employment-based visas are limited to a global pool of talent in a wide variety of occupational sectors – and prevents one or two countries from dominating the distribution. The practical effect is that individuals from countries with high demand for…
Read the full story
by Chris White Facebook recently changed its algorithms to steer focus away from explicitly political content, but now that alteration is laying waste to conservative and liberal outlets. Conservative pundit Deneen Borelli laid into Facebook last week, telling her followers on July 9 that the company’s bias against conservatives cost her a job. In fact, she is holding CEO Mark Zuckerberg chiefly responsible after BlazeTV cancelled her Facebook show, “Here’s the Deal.” “And Mark, I hold you responsible for the high-tech lynching of my job,” Borelli, a black conservative who gained a large following during her run, said in her final video on July 9, which received more than 374,000 views as of the posting of this article. Reports appear to show that Facebook’s algorithm shift is suppressing content across all platforms. A BlazeTV representative confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that her show was cancelled due to a lack of viewership. “My videos were not clickbait. I didn’t engage in over-the-top antics to get attention. I wasn’t shrill, and my videos were not challenged by a fact-check organization,” Borelli added. She told the DCNF she started seeing her content crater after she spoke at the Conservative Political Action…
Read the full story
by Chris White Google is plowing money into the coffers of several conservative groups who are criticizing Sen. Josh Hawley as the Missouri Republican continues crusading against the Silicon Valley giant. The big tech company provides “substantial contributions” to groups like R-Street, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), TechFreedom, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), to name a few. All four groups characterize Hawley’s legislation targeting tech companies as ploys designed to blow up the internet. “Not only would this legislation drastically hurt free speech and competition in the online ecosystem, it would mean more conservative content, not less, will be removed from these websites,” R- Street analyst Jeff Westling wrote in June 19 post, responding to Hawley’s move to amend legal protections tech companies enjoy. EFF analyst Elliot Harmon made similar remarks. Throttling big tech would effectively “let the government decide who speaks,” he wrote on June 20. Funding for the groups comes after big tech companies dramatically escalated their lobbying efforts. Amazon, Google and Facebook gave Washington, D.C., lobbyists a record amount of money in 2018, almost exactly a year before Democratic lawmakers announced an antitrust investigation into the Silicon Valley giants. They dumped a…
Read the full story
by George Rasley Fans of the Terminator series of science fiction action movies will recall that the Terminators were the product of an Artificial Intelligence defense system that turned against humans and decided to wipe out its creators. But what if Skynet had been programmed so that it only learned to attack white people, or Christians, or conservatives? The movie and the results of that dystopian vision of the future would have been a lot different. But not so different from what Jen Gennai, Head of Responsible Innovation at Google Global Affairs had in mind for Google’s Artificial Intelligence when she told an undercover reporter for Project Veritas: The reason we launched our A.I. principles is that people were not putting that line in the sand, that they were not saying what’s fair and what’s equitable so we’re like, well we are a big company, we’re going to say it… …my definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalized communities. That’s what I care about. Communities who are in power and have traditionally been in power are NOT who I’m solving fairness for. That’s not what I set up for *inaudible* people to address. Our definition of…
Read the full story
by Chris White A Google executive said Monday night that an undercover video of her discussing what the company plans to do about the “next Trump situation” was deceptively edited. Project Veritas caught veteran Google employee Jen Gennai in a video appearing to suggest that her company is working on preventing President Donald Trump from winning re-election. She said in a Medium post shortly after the report was published Monday that she was referring to ways the company can wipe out misinformation online. “Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course,” Gennai wrote. Gennai claims her comments were misconstrued to seem ominous. “I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016,” she said. Google has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for an interview with Gennai. Her comments come as big tech companies are feeling pressure to do more to clean up their platforms…
Read the full story
by CHQ Staff In a bombshell new undercover video, insider interview and document leak, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has exposed that search giant Google, whose senior executives were intimately involved in the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has plans to “prevent” another “Trump situation” in 2020. The brave Google insider says Google violates the “letter of the law” and “spirit of the law” of Section 230 granting it immunity as a “platform.” Key Quotes From The Video: James O’Keefe III: Why did you decide to come forward and talk to Project Veritas. Google Insider: They’re not an objective source of information. They are a highly biased political machine that is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again. Jen Gennai, Head of Responsible Innovation at Google Global Affairs: “we all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again…” Google Insider: Well, right after Donald Trump won the election, in 2016, the company did a complete 180 in what they thought was important,…
Read the full story
U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn had not issued a statement by Monday night concerning a new expose showing left-wing bias at Google. James O’Keefe of Project Veritas released the video Monday. In it, Google employees discuss the tools they use to try to undermine U.S. Republican President Donald Trump and to prevent his reelection next year. The Tennessee Star contacted Blackburn’s office Monday. “I have not yet seen the videos,” said Blackburn spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory. Gregory said she could not promise a response before Monday’s stated deadline. 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…
Read the full story
The same Google employee who described U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee as a terrorist reportedly had a role in firing a conservative co-worker, according to various news agencies. As The Tennessee Star reported last year, Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google, has a problem with Blackburn. Also, as reported, Lemoine is part of a cult under the tutelage of a former porn star. According to Fox Business, 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. “In the final written warning one of the allegations they had against me was that someone had called me rude, disrespectful and intellectually dishonest — well this was the same person who had referred to Sen. [Marsha] Blackburn as…
Read the full story
by Ned Ryu It’s time the American people woke up and understood what the big tech companies, many of which are now publishers and telecommunications companies masquerading as neutral platforms, are doing with their personal data. Respecting individual privacy is the most common concern you find in the media and elsewhere. But privacy is only part of the challenge before us—and a relatively small part at that. By feeding companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook untold amounts of personally identifiable data, Americans—specifically American workers—are helping sow the seeds of their own demise. Many people don’t take the time to consider what happens to their data when they give it away. Where does it go? With whom is it being shared? How is it being used to accelerate the growth of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation? The data being given freely to these tech companies and the amount of personally identifiable data being collected put the National Security Agency’s efforts to shame. Like it or not, all of this data isn’t being used simply to inform algorithms that help you make better movie selections or put funny cat videos into your Facebook feed or remind you that you’re…
Read the full story
by Chris White The Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust probe against Google’s search engine and business model, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night, citing people familiar with the issue. It would be the first such investigation since the Federal Trade Commission conducted a probe of Google but closed it in 2013 without taking action. The FTC and DOJ have discussed which agency would oversee a probe of the internet giant — the commission agreed to give DOJ officials jurisdiction, TheWSJ noted. The Trump administration is focusing its attention on Google’s business model related to the company’s search. Google and the DOJ have not responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Investigating Google was in some ways a long time in the making. Conservatives and liberals have become increasingly critical of big tech. Facebook was scrutinized after Russia used its platform to intervene in American politics. Lawmakers are also unsure about the companies assurances that they are careful handling private data. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, proposed a bill in May that would essentially block tech companies from tracking people’s locations without direct…
Read the full story
by Edward Ring Competing investigations and alternative analyses offer partisans on both sides ample fodder to feed their biases, but a presumption that guilt can be manufactured if it doesn’t exist is the common thread pushing them. Just as the Soviets knew in Stalinist Russia, if you look at anyone long enough, you’re going to find something to use against them. Instead of dispatching political opponents with bullets to the back of the head, however, we Americans fight with politicized investigations, attorneys, and political grandstanding. And on the side of America’s anti-Trump shadow government, deep state, establishment bureaucracy, the media closes ranks and takes every opportunity to distort the truth in favor of an agenda. Recent reporting provides yet another example of the establishment media’s Stalinesque anti-Trump bias. President Trump on Wednesday canceled a meeting to discuss infrastructure legislation with House leadership, because immediately prior to the meeting, he was blindsided by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holding a meeting with pro-impeachment lawmakers, where she “emphasized that the White House is engaging in a ‘cover-up’.” Some news accounts suggest that Trump planned to cancel the meeting and hold a press conference instead, based on the fact that a “no collusion, no obstruction” sign had been…
Read the full story
by Chris White Google suspended some business with Huawei after President Donald Trump placed restrictions on technologies from foreign adversaries, Reuters reported Sunday, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter. Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company the United States believes is engaged in foreign espionage, will reportedly lose access to updates to the Android operating system, as well as the next version of Google’s smartphones. The move is expected to deny the company access to critical applications. Details are not fully fleshed out as Google is still discussing the matter internally, one source told Reuters. Neither Google nor Huawei responded to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for confirmation. The move comes shortly after Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that would effectively ban certain types of technologies from foreign countries deemed a national security threat to the U.S. The U.S., meanwhile, continues to apply pressure on Britain and others to shy away from using Huawei to build out its fifth generation network. Allowing the participation of Huawei in Germany’s 5G project would mean the U.S. won’t be able to maintain the same level of cooperation with Germany’s security agencies, U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell said in March. Justice Department officials charged Huawei on…
Read the full story
by Glenn Elmers Google tried to censor the Claremont Institute last week. The tech giant backed off under pressure, but the tactical maneuver was hardly a failure. To see why, we only have to think strategically. The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank devoted to preserving the original meaning and vitality of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Claremont has launched a new campaign against the dangers of multiculturalism, as Institute President Ryan Williams announced in an essay last month in its digital publication, The American Mind. The essay explains how multiculturalism and identity politics are anathemas to the American principles of equal natural rights. Google decreed that essay, and indeed Claremont’s whole American Mind site, to be “a racially oriented publication”—an absurdity belied by Claremont’s long-standing fight against racial classifications, and Google’s indifference to rampant leftist obsessions with racial and ethnic differences. When the Institute responded aggressively, publicly challenging Google, several conservative outlets expressed outrage. Google-backed off, claiming it had made a “mistake.” Given the facts and applying the most basic logic, this is obviously false. The most relevant fact is that Institute staff had to spend two hours on the phone asking Google how its ban…
Read the full story
by Chris White Conservatives are considering a slew of bold ideas to hold various social media companies accountable for nixing conservative-leaning content. Some analysts worry conservative activists’ mission to damage big tech sets a bad precedent. One of the best ways to ding Facebook is to make the company responsible for the content users post, according to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Other conservative thinkers believe depriving access to social media platforms is a type of civil rights abuse. Still others want to use anti-trust trust laws to punish Twitter. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri suggests that social media giants have discovered a way to benefit financially by short-circuiting people’s rational thinking. “The internal tensions of our goals seem irreconcilable. How do we preserve online data privacy for users of products whose very purpose is hyper-personalized service? Or how is it possible to keep the digital platform free of criminal activity without inserting their own political biases into the editorializing that they are doing?” Hawley said Thursday during a Hoover Institute discussion on big tech. “There is something deeply wrong with the social media economy. It is a source of peril. Users attention is bought and then…
Read the full story
The Google engineer who last year described U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn as a terrorist is part of a cult under the tutelage of a former porn star, according to this week’s Daily Caller. As The Tennessee Star reported last year, Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google, has a real beef with Blackburn. As The Daily Caller reported, Lemoine is a priest at the Church of Our Lady Magdalene. “The Church of Our Lady Magdalene has since changed its name to the Cult of Our Lady Magdalene, according to their website. Lemoine signed his Medium post with the title, ‘Priest of the Church of Our Lady Magdalene,’” the website reported. “One of the other leaders of the cult is High Priestess Kitty Stryker, who describes herself as ‘an active member of the genderqueer feminist art collective, the NorCal Degenerates’ and, in messages with the Daily Caller, as an ‘ex-sex worker’ who has performed in several pornographic movies.” The Degenderettes, The Daily Caller went on to report, are responsible for an art exhibition that included axes, baseball bats covered in barbed wire, and riot shields with the slogan, ‘Die Cis Scum.’” The website went on to say the cult’s beliefs influenced…
Read the full story
by Mary Margaret Olohan Google is backing down after labeling the pro-life “Unplanned” movie as “propaganda” on Thursday. “Unplanned,” the story of an abortion doctor and clinic director Abby Johson who left her practice after witnessing an ultra sound abortion, was listed on Google’s search engine as a “drama/propaganda” film, according to a tweet from The Daily Signal’s senior writer and producer Kelsey Bolar. (RELATED: Twitter Temporarily Suspended ‘Unplanned’ Movie Account On Opening Weekend) “Who knew that “propaganda” was a movie genre? @Google once again exposing its gross political bias,” Harkness said in a tweet. Who knew that “propaganda” was a movie genre? @Google once again exposing its gross political bias. @UnplannedMovie pic.twitter.com/jOh6TlqQ7C — Kelsey Bolar (Harkness) (@kelseybolar) April 11, 2019 Live Action founder and president Lila Rose pointed out in a tweet that though “Unplanned” was labeled as propaganda, a 1935 Nazi propaganda film is listed on a Google search engine as “war/history.” “Yesterday @Google had their contempt for pro-life voices on full display by labeling @UnplannedMovie as “propaganda.” Meanwhile, “The Triumph of the Will” a literal Nazi propaganda film is labeled as “history/war” Was this just another “mistake,” or “algorithm” error?” Asked Rose in a tweet. Yesterday…
Read the full story
“Its time for tech companies like Google and Facebook to start embracing the spirit of the First Amendment,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The senator made the remarks during a hearing titled, “Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse.” Video of Blackburn’s remarks may be watched here. Blackburn called out media giants to use their power responsibly and to respect diverse viewpoints, particularly conservative voices. She tweeted, “Big Tech shouldn’t censor stories and posts in our newsfeeds. Let free speech flourish. My full questions at the @senjudiciary hearing on censorship:”. Big Tech shouldn't censor stories and posts in our newsfeeds. Let free speech flourish. My full questions at the @senjudiciary hearing on censorship: https://t.co/asy2FRD16S — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 10, 2019 Blackburn also on Wednesday introduced SB1116, the Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly (BROWSER) Act, she said in a press release. The BROWSER Act requires communications and technology companies to provide users with clear and conspicuous notice of their privacy policies and the ability to opt-in to the collection of sensitive information and to opt-out of the collection of non-sensitive information. It also prohibits these companies…
Read the full story
by Chris White Google and Facebook executives were grilled Tuesday over their inability to govern white nationalism on their platforms, but they gave few answers about why their algorithms are dinging conservative content. Neil Potts, Facebook’s director of public policy, and Alexandria Walden, counsel for free expression and human rights at Google, spoke to the House Judiciary Committee alongside activists of the Anti-Defamation League, among other groups. House lawmakers asked the two executives about the effectiveness of their artificial intelligence. “That’s why hate speech and violent extremism have no place on YouTube,” Walden said during the House Judiciary Committee, noting what Google is doing to combat white nationalism on its platform. Walden and Potts also noted that their algorithms sometimes have a difficult time fleshing out the difference between legitimate forms of speech and language that is not permitted. “We don’t and we won’t always get it right, but we’ve improved significantly,” Potts added, referring to Facebook’s new stance on nixing white nationalism. He noted that the company is not prohibiting people from expressing their love for country and community, but it does not permit bigotry and hatred. Walden made similar comments. “Hate speech removals can be particularly complex…
Read the full story
U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Monday called for a Federal Trade Commission investigation into online platforms over privacy concerns, data security and antitrust violations. Blackburn tweeted, “Today, @SenAmyKlobuchar and I urged the @FTC to hold tech companies like @Google and @Facebook accountable for securing their platforms. Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their #VirtualYou.” Today, @SenAmyKlobuchar and I urged the @FTC to hold tech companies like @Google and @Facebook accountable for securing their platforms. Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their #VirtualYou. pic.twitter.com/rQvvY0ZPce — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 8, 2019 The letter comes a few weeks after U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI-01), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, asked for the FTC to probe whether Facebook has violated antitrust laws, The Hill said. Blackburn said in a press release, “Tennesseans are rightly concerned about who owns their Virtual You. They want to be certain that their privacy is protected in both the physical and virtual space. The FTC has a responsibility to hold technology companies accountable for securing their platforms. My hope is that through this bipartisan effort we will shed light on the need to protect competition and online privacy to keep up…
Read the full story
by Tim Pearce Ten international corporations contacted by The Daily Caller News Foundation got their start in the U.S. but stayed silent when asked if they saw themselves as “American” companies. Nine others responded to TheDCNF’s inquiry by either identifying with their American heritage, obscuring their loyalties or declining to comment altogether. TheDCNF wanted to gauge the commitment of international corporations with roots in the United States to keeping an “American” identity. TheDCNF did not define what an “American” company looks like or list out any principles or ideals that “American” companies are committed to, leaving each business to attach meaning to the name if one chose to stand by it. Representatives for Amazon, Apple, Chevron, General Electric and others did not respond to TheDCNF’s inquiry. A spokesman for the health care giant UnitedHealth Group asked for clarification of the question but never responded after clarification was given. The tech companies Google, Facebook and Twitter – all headquartered in California – are under distinct pressure to increase transparency and be upfront about their commitments, especially as it relates to censored content. Conservatives especially have taken issue with the tech giants’ policies, and U.S. politicians are wary of the companies’ operations in…
Read the full story
by Jarrett Stepman Silicon Valley has enormous power over the flow of information that reaches people around the globe. That’s why it’s vital for Americans to understand how tech giants can manipulate information, either intentionally or unwittingly, to advance a political agenda. Now, 34 conservative leaders are banding together to call for tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google to “cut ties” with the Southern Poverty Law Center. The letter states in part, “It is now clear that the SPLC has proven to be a hate-filled, anti-Christian, anti-conservative organization and nothing more than a weapon of the radical Left, whose goal is to bully people into compliance with their ideology.” [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] As we’ve discussed on previous episodes of “Media Misses,” the SPLC is a far-left civil rights organization that has made wild claims about conservative organizations over the years, lumping them in with hate groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. It has come under scrutiny after its founder, Morris Dees, resigned over accusations of discrimination and improper behavior. The issue has garnered the attention of those in Congress as…
Read the full story
NASHVILLE, Tennessee – A bill that would have shed light on taxpayer funded payments by Tennessee state and local governments to private entities was killed at its first stop in the House Public Service & Employees Subcommittee. By an obvious voice vote on HB 0370, Chairman Bob Ramsey (R-Maryville) ruled that the Nays prevailed. In his introduction of the bill, Representative Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) told the subcommittee members, “The intent of this bill is to require disclosure – to shine a light, if you will – on what our government entities are paying for goods and services.” Representative Daniel told the committee, “I would submit that transparency and accountability in government instills public trust in government.” “However, vague and broad exceptions to the (Tennessee) Public Records Act concerning what a private entity might deem to be trade secrets or confidential information can obscure information concerning benefits that are conveyed by government entities to these privately-owned recipients,” continued Daniel. To clarify, Daniel emphatically stated, “This bill would not act on or touch such information” that may actually be confidential and disclosed by the private entity in connection with receiving government payments, benefits or properties. “It is we,” Daniel fervently stated, emphasizing…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson Google banned a video explaining Christian teaching on same-sex marriage from advertising on YouTube after backlash from upset employees, according to internal Google communications reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The video was flagged in June 2018 in an internal listserv, “Yes at Google,” which is run by Google’s human resources department, according to those communications and other internal documents, which a source shared with TheDCNF on condition of anonymity. The listserv has more than 30,000 members and is devoted to policing “microaggressions” and “micro-corrections” within the company, according to its official internal description. The internal backlash to the video grew large enough to merit a response from a Google vice president, who said the video would no longer be eligible to run as an advertisement, the human resources team announced to the listserv. Christian radio host Michael L. Brown argues in the video that gay people are welcome as Christians but that, like every other person, they are called to follow Christian teachings on sex and marriage. Brown has spoken out in the past against “homo-hatred” and “ugly rhetoric” directed at gay and lesbian people by fringe groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. In…
Read the full story
The United States’ top general said on Thursday that the Chinese military was benefiting from the work Alphabet Inc’s Google was doing in China, where the technology giant has long sought to have a bigger presence. “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,” he said. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may be not a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.” Last year Google said it was no longer vying for a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the U.S. Defense Department, in part because the company’s new ethical guidelines do not align with the project. In June, Google said it would not renew a contract to help the U.S. military analyze aerial drone imagery when it expires, as the company sought to defuse an internal uproar over the deal. At the same time, Google said it has “no plans” to relaunch a search engine in China,…
Read the full story
by Chris White Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan Friday to wallop big tech companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon as the Massachusetts Democrat works to differentiate herself among fellow presidential candidates. Her proposal would impose new rules on tech companies with $25 billion or more in annual ad revenue, forcing Amazon and Google to dramatically reduce their hold on online commerce. The plan would also aim to curtail mergers between companies like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. “Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation,” Warren wrote in a blog post Friday. She announced her bid to run against President Donald Trump in February. She added: “That’s why my Administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition—including breaking up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.” Warren is expected to promote the idea Friday evening in Long Island City, New York, where Amazon was planning to build a monster campus before the online…
Read the full story
Google wants 20 years’ worth of future tax breaks with a value of up to $15 million for a data center the tech giant plans to build in central Minnesota. Google plans to build the $600 million data center in Sherburne County on 300 acres owned by Xcel Energy. According to MPR News, filings submitted to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission by Google estimate that the project will create 2,300 temporary construction jobs, and at least 50 permanent jobs. Becker Mayor Tracy Bertram noted that the tech jobs at the data center would have an annual payroll of $4 million, and said the data center will produce $7 million in economic activity per year. As such, Google asked Sherburne County and Becker city officials for property tax breaks for 20 years, which would save the company roughly $15 million. “This will generate a lot of economic activity that will benefit not only the city and the county, but also the state and the region,” Sherburne County Administrator Steve Taylor said. Taylor expects that county commissioners will be open to the request, but will be holding hearings in March to convince the public. The tax abatement would save Google between $7…
Read the full story
Alphabet Inc., the multinational conglomerate that both was established by and currently owns Google.com, has announced that they will be establishing an opioid treatment center in Dayton, Ohio. While this could be good news for a community that is still deeply in the midst of an opioid epidemic, the recent revelations about data collection by Google and other digital tech companies raise questions about the new treatment center. The effort, dubbed OneFifteen, will be headed by Andy Conrad, Ph.D. (pictured above) and housed in a new “tech enabled campus.” It will be an initiative of Verily, the development wing of Alphabet that deals with life sciences. The new facility was announced Wednesday in a blog post on the company website. The post points out the alarming statistics regarding opioid abuse and the intent of this new campus to treat these problems. It also explicitly notes that one of the biggest challenges to healthcare is a severe lack of data, most notably the data gaps. While this is undoubtedly accurate, there are many concerns with greater data aggregation. In recent years, data companies have proven themselves to be at best wildly irresponsible and at worst explicitly malicious in aggregating and then selling the personal data of individuals. The notion of this…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checking website given preferential treatment by both Facebook and Google, flubbed its fact-check of American Indian activist Nathan Phillips’ false claim of being a Vietnam veteran. Phillips shot to national attention after a viral confrontation between him and a group of high school boys from Covington Catholic high school. Phillips, with the help of credulous national media outlets, said the boys mobbed and racially harassed him as he tried to leave the Indigenous People’s March. Video evidence debunked Phillips’s account. In addition to botching the details of the confrontation, media outlets also inaccurately reported that Phillips is a Vietnam veteran. Phillips described himself in interviews as a “Vietnam-times veteran” and groups affiliated with him told The New York Times that he fought in Vietnam. Phillips explicitly claimed in a 2018 Facebook video that he was a Vietnam veteran who served “in theater.” Military records show that Phillips never deployed to Vietnam, though his military service did include a long stint as a refrigerator technician. Snopes’s fact-check incorrectly labeled it “unproven” that Phillips had falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. Snopes declined to change its misleading ruling despite definitive video evidence of Phillips doing exactly that. Both Facebook and Google give Snopes preferential treatment on their platforms, though…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson A Google executive sparked a fierce backlash from employees by using the word “family” in a weekly, company-wide presentation, according to internal documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Many Google employees became angry that the term was used while discussing a product aimed at children, because it implied that families have children, the documents show. The backlash grew large enough that a Google vice president addressed the controversy and solicited feedback on how the company could become more inclusive. TheDCNF received the documents from a source who insisted upon anonymity in order to share them. One employee stormed out of the March 2017 presentation after a presenter “continued to show (awesome) Unicorn product features which continually use the word ‘family’ as a synonym for ‘household with children,’” he explained in an internal thread. That employee posted an extended rant, which was well-received by his colleagues, on why linking families to children is “offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong.” He wrote: This is a diminishing and disrespectful way to speak. If you mean “children”, say “children”; we have a perfectly good word for it. “Family friendly” used as a synonym for “kid friendly” means, to me,…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson Conservative nonprofit PragerU filed suit against Google in California court on Tuesday for allegedly violating state law in restricting access to Prager’s educational videos on YouTube, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The suit claims that YouTube’s restrictions on many of Prager’s videos violate California law in four ways: Restricting the nonprofit’s freedom of speech contrary to the state constitution; discriminating against Prager on a religious and political basis in violation of the state’s civil rights act; “engaging in unlawful, misleading, and unfair businesses practices” contrary to the state’s unfair competition laws; and breach of contract for violating YouTube’s own terms of service. Many of Prager’s videos have been placed in “restricted mode,” which often makes them unavailable for users who are part of or using a larger network, such as networks operated by schools, libraries and public institutions. The suit also claims that YouTube capriciously and discriminatorily demonetized Prager’s videos, depriving them of earning advertising revenue from their videos. Prager previously filed suit against Google, YouTube’s parent company, in federal court. That suit lost at the district level and is currently pending on appeal before the 9th…
Read the full story
by Ryan McMaken The Creepy Line, a new documentary by director M.A. Taylor, is now streaming at Amazon Prime. It provides an interesting and revealing look at how Google and Facebook influence their users’ view of the world, and how the users we often presume to be the customers of these companies aren’t really the customers. The users are, in fact, the product being sold to third parties. The Creepy Line takes its title from a description of Google once uttered by Google executive Eric Schmidt who said Google’s mission was to “get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” In truth, though, by pioneering the “surveillance business model,” Google has arguably been stepping over “the creepy line” for years. Not that this has been much of a problem for the company. Few users seem motivated to stop using Google products. It is perhaps in its basic explanations of how this surveillance model works that The Creepy Line is most interesting: the filmmakers explain in simple terms how a small number of companies have come to compile extensive data profiles of many hundreds of millions of human beings, and how that user data is the real…
Read the full story
by Ned Ryun It’s time for all of us to admit that Alphabet, Inc. is the 21st century equivalent of Ma Bell: it is an almost all-controlling monopoly that restricts consumer choice in order to maximize profit for the company. We all know what Ronald Reagan did to AT&T. He broke up that monopoly so Americans could have real choices and the free market could actually work. So it’s time for the Trump Administration to break up the Alphabet, Inc. monopoly. But unlike the Ma Bell monopoly, Alphabet, Inc.’s monopoly—which includes the search-engine behemoth Google—isn’t just about greater competition and more choices for the American people. It’s about so much more: free political discourse and our privacy rights as citizens. Last week in Washington D.C., the House called in Google CEO Sundar Pichai to question him about the bias against conservatives at his company, but also about data privacy and Google’s plans for working with China. Every last one of those issues should trouble every last American. The mainstream media, as the mindless propagandists of the deep state and Democratic Party, are still trying to maintain the miserable hoax of Russian collusion to cover up their own misdeeds and…
Read the full story
by Chris White Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared to catch Democratic lawmakers off guard Tuesday after disclosing in a congressional hearing the paltry amount of money Russia spent on ads on the 2016 election. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler asked Pichai about the extent to which Russia used Google to interject itself in that year’s presidential election. Pichai’s answer seemed to genuinely surprise the New York Democrat. “We undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016, we now know of two main Russian accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising,” Pichai said. Nadler then asked him to repeat the number one more time. Facebook came under similar scrutiny in 2017, when the Silicon Valley company admitted to congressional investigators to selling political ads to a suspicious Russian outlet in 2016. Most of the ads did not focus on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and the ad sales cost roughly $100,000. Instead, the ads touched on hot-button issues, like race, gun rights, gay rights and immigration. Meanwhile, Twitter told lawmakers it found about 200 Russian-linked accounts based on what Facebook had identified. Twitter sold more than $274,000 worth of ads to the news outlet RT, a…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson Google employees sought to block Breitbart from Google AdSense less than one month after President Donald Trump took office, leaked emails from the company reveal. Google employees sought to use alleged “hate speech” as a pretense for banning Breitbart from taking part in the advertising program, the emails show. Barring Breitbart from the advertising program would have a devastating effect on the site’s ad revenue, as Google accounts for roughly 37 percent of all digital advertising revenue. Breitbart obtained the emails and published them on Monday night, one day before Google CEO Sundar Pichai is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. A Google spokeswoman confirmed the emails’s authenticity to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “My team has been reviewing the site on a frequent (at least weekly) from the original fake news kick-off discussion,” Google’s director of monetization at the time, Jim Gray, assured employees concerned about Breitbart. Gray now is now Google’s director of trust and safety. Richard Zippel, a Google publisher quality manager at the time, similarly noted that Breitbart was being watched closely. “When sufficient violations have been found we’ll take action at the site level,” Zippel wrote. It’s unclear whether…
Read the full story
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) apparently does not like it when Google shows conservative websites’ coverage of his television appearances. He remarked upon that trend during a House Judiciary Committee grilling of Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday. Cohen accused Google of “overly using conservative news organizations on your news,” PJ Media reported. “This weekend I was on MSNBC four times, and yet the first thing that comes up is The Daily Caller, not exactly a liberal, but I guess well-known group, then Roll Call, then Breitbart News, then the Memphis Business Journal, then Breitbart News, then Breitbart,” Cohen said. “…I’d like you to look into overuse of conservative news organizations to put on liberal people’s news on Google.” Pichai said, “I can assure you we do this in a neutral way. And we do this based on that specific keyword, what we are able to access the most relevant information.” “I’m sure you try to, but it’s hard for me to fathom being on MSNBC for like eight minutes each show, four times, and there’s more content on Breitbart News than MSNBC,” Cohen replied. “That might say something about – well I’m not going to say that. Scary.” Perhaps even…
Read the full story
by Peter Hasson Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checking website given preferential treatment by Facebook and Google, botched its fact-check of a viral meme that was mocked within political circles for spreading false information. The meme showed a picture of President Donald Trump with Republican lawmakers and members of his administration following the House’s vote to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Thirty-three people in the photo Snopes used had a red X over their face, though it cropped out a 34th person included in others. The caption accurately claimed the photo was taken at the White House following the House’s Obamacare vote, then falsely claimed that “Everyone with an X has since been voted out of Congress.” https://twitter.com/JoePerticone/status/1063927192822915072 DeSantis ran for gov. Tom Price went into the Cabinet. Steve Pearce didnt run for the House This is quite literally insane fake news. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Amazing. This photo illustration — posted by @nicholaskitchel — is actually more incorrect than correct. — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2018 Or to be clear, it’s just flat out inaccurate. https://t.co/NH7xiCbbHq — Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 17, 2018 Politico reporter Jake Sherman observed that the meme “is actually more incorrect than correct.”…
Read the full story
by Evie Fordham A Republican lawmaker and lawmaker-elect called for an investigation of Google Friday morning after Thursday’s revelation that the tech giant’s employees debated burying conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election. Republican Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar called on the Department of Justice to investigate Google, and Republican Missouri Sen.-elect Josh Hawley called for Google execs to explain themselves “under oath.” “So what do we have here? Looks like a monopoly scheming to use its market power to silence news [and] viewpoints it doesn’t like. Starting to see a pattern here,” Hawley wrote on Twitter Friday. “Google execs need to explain what is going on here. Under oath.” So what do we have here? Looks like a monopoly scheming to use its market power to silence news & viewpoints it doesn’t like. Starting to see a pattern here. https://t.co/Up1KyJDXeN — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 30, 2018 The senator-elect linked to an exclusive story about anti-conservative bias at Google by The Daily Caller News Foundation in the tweet. Gosar also linked to The DCNF’s article. “Google has a virtual monopoly as far as search engines go. It’s past time @DOJPH [sic] investigate this and it’s time Congress…
Read the full story