Posts

Watch: Leaked Video Shows Top Google Execs’ ‘Upset’ Reaction to Trump Election

/0 Comments/in , /by

A leaked video published Wednesday night appears to show several of Google’s senior executives holding a large staff meeting following the 2016 election to reckon with President Donald Trump’s victory.

In the video, which was published by Breitbart, Google’s executives speculate about what motivated people to vote for Trump, as well as the role the company can play in informing people about the election. . .

“We have no idea what direction this country will take… It’s a period of great uncertainty… especially for immigrants or minorities [and] women,” co-founder Sergey Brin told Google employees. “As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive, and I know many of you do too.”

The video features co-founders Larry Page and Brin, VPs Kent Walker and Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and CEO Sundar Pichai.

One employee can be seen asking Google what it can do about “misinformation” and “fake news,” to which Pichai said that “investments in machine learning and AI” are a “big opportunity” to remedy that problem. Walker mirrored much of his colleagues’ position. (Read more from “Watch: Leaked Video Shows Top Google Execs’ ‘Upset’ Reaction to Trump Election” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Unloads on ‘Rigged’ Google, Threatens Action

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump was awake early Tuesday morning and once again took aim at the perceived bias of Silicon Valley with a pair of tweets aimed at Google.

The search-engine giant had been the subject of an investigation by one conservative website that found a majority of news results related to Trump were from “liberal” media sites.

That designation was itself lifted from a “media bias chart” compiled by journalist Sharyl Attkisson. Major media properties including CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post appear on the left-leaning side of that chart.

Apparently referencing that PJ Media report, the president began by tweeting that Google’s behavior could be against the law.

Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

He claimed the tech giant had “RIGGED” the system against him and his supporters while artificially amplifying the voices of his detractors in the media.

“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media,” he wrote. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD.”

While keeping the focus on Google, Trump denounced “Fake CNN” as a “prominent” news outlet within the search engine’s results.

“Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out,” he wrote. “Illegal?”

As his statement ran into a second tweet, Trump hinted that his administration could take action against the company, though he did not elaborate on what crime he believes Google might have committed.

“96% of…….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous,” the president tweeted at about 5:30 a.m. Eastern time. “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good.”

Trump concluded by insinuating that Google’s influence is so great that it can effectively silence some voices on the internet.

“They are controlling what we can & cannot see,” he wrote. “This is a very serious situation — will be addressed!”

In a statement later Tuesday morning, the president’s economic adviser confirmed his team would be determining whether the government should step in to regulate what users find when they search for content online using Google.

“We’ll let you know,” Larry Kudlow said. “We’re taking a look at it.”

Earlier this month, Trump tweeted similar criticism of the nation’s leading social media firms, which have been accused of exhibiting political bias in removing or restricting access to certain content.

“If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed,” Trump wrote. (For more from the author of “Trump Unloads on ‘Rigged’ Google, Threatens Action” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Here’s a Scary Thought – Google.Gov

/0 Comments/in , /by

I read an enlightening piece this week in The New Atlantis – a very serious magazine – that I hope is read soon by Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, every member of the House Freedom caucus, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the conservative minority among Senate Republicans and all Americans who are suspicious of mega-rich, mega-powerful corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Written by Andrew White, the headline is very simple – not to mention alarming: “Google.gov.” The subheadline: “Amid growing calls to break up Google, are we missing a quiet alignment between ‘smart’ government and the universal information engine?” . . .

I’ll summarize a few of the alarming things you will learn from this piece – with my help, of course:

Serious publications from left to right have been paying attention to Google lately. In February, the New York Times Magazine published “The Case Against Google,” about how “the search giant is squelching competition before it begins.” The Wall Street Journal published a similar article in January on the “antitrust case” against Google, along with Facebook and Amazon, whose market shares it compared to Standard Oil and AT&T at their peaks.

Google and Barack Obama’s administration had a “uniquely close relationship. Their special bond is best ascribed not to the revolving door, although hundreds of meetings were held between the two; nor to crony capitalism, although hundreds of people have switched jobs from Google to the Obama administration or vice versa; nor to lobbying prowess, although Google is one of the top corporate lobbyists. Rather, the ultimate source of the special bond between Google and the Obama White House – and modern progressive government more broadly – has been their common ethos. Both view society’s challenges today as social-engineering problems, whose resolutions depend mainly on facts and objective reasoning. Both view information as being at once ruthlessly value-free and yet, when properly grasped, a powerful force for ideological and social reform. And so both aspire to reshape Americans’ informational context, ensuring that we make choices based only upon what they consider the right kinds of facts – while denying that there would be any values or politics embedded in the effort.”

(Read more from “Here’s a Scary Thought – Google.Gov” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract

/0 Comments/in , /by

It’s been nearly three months since many Google employees—and the public—learned about the company’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company’s continued involvement in Maven.

The resigning employees’ frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google’s political decisions—and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.

The employees who are resigning in protest, several of whom discussed their decision to leave with Gizmodo, say that executives have become less transparent with their workforce about controversial business decisions and seem less interested in listening to workers’ objections than they once did. In the case of Maven, Google is helping the Defense Department implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones. But some employees believe humans, not algorithms, should be responsible for this sensitive and potentially lethal work—and that Google shouldn’t be involved in military work at all.

Historically, Google has promoted an open culture that encourages employees to challenge and debate product decisions. But some employees feel that their leadership no longer as attentive to their concerns, leaving them to face the fallout. “Over the last couple of months, I’ve been less and less impressed with the response and the way people’s concerns are being treated and listened to,” one employee who resigned said.

There’s precedent for employee pushback resulting in product changes—in 2015, employees and users successfully challenged Google’s ban on sexually explicit content posted to Blogger. But these are the first known mass resignations at Google in protest against one of the company’s business decisions, and they speak to the strongly felt ethical concerns of the employees who are departing. (Read more from “Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Rigged: Google Bans Pro-Life Ads Ahead of Vote on Abortion Legalization

/0 Comments/in , /by

On Wednesday, Google announced its crackdown on pro-life ads on both their search engine site and YouTube ahead of Ireland’s vote on the legalization of abortion via the repeal of the country’s Eighth Amendment, which is set for May 25.

In a statement released by Google, the tech company claimed they were blocking all abortion-related ads to allegedly keep the “integrity” of the election. “Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” reads the statement.

Pro-lifers, noting a recent drop in polling for the “Yes” vote, have accused Google of attempting to rig the election in favor of the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, thus legalizing abortion. “An emergency press conference was called by the Pro Life Campaign, Save the 8th and the Iona Institute, following the announcement,” reported Ireland’s Independent. “They claimed the decision to ban ads on Google had been taken ‘because one side in this referendum is terrified of losing and wants to prevent voters from being informed.'”

Pro-lifer John McGuirk called out Google for their apparently disingenuous statement regarding “election integrity.” “It is about concerns that the No side might win,” he protested . . .

Speaking of big money, power, and influence, George Soros is apparently behind the referendum. LifeNews reports that a leaked 2016 “document from American billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations revealed plans to push Ireland and other pro-life countries to legalize abortion on demand.” Some of these donations were deemed illegal under the 1997 Electoral Act, though the receiving pro-abortion group refused to return the money. (Read more from “Rigged: Google Bans Pro-Life Ads Ahead of Vote on Abortion Legalization” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Bias Google Rejects Christian Publisher

/0 Comments/in , /by

Concordia Publishing House has been in business since 1869 as the official publishing arm of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination.

But apparently the Christian content of its website, particularly an ad for an upcoming Vacation Bible School, is too much for Google AdWords, the online advertising service . . .

Kintz said one of his associates was told by Google AdWords, as an example, that the “Bible challenge” on the publishers Vacation Bible School Web page “would clearly need to come down before they could consider us for ads.” . . .

The “Bible challenge” page has references to Bible verses such as Hebrews 10:23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope … for He who promised is faithful,” and Isaiah 43:2, “God promises: ‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.’” . . .

In January, Google was accused of censoring six conservative media sites – Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, the Blaze, Gateway Pundit and WND – by treating them as “fake news,” with warnings about their content. WND reported Google refers people to the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center for reputation research on sites and pages. (Read more from “Bias Google Rejects Christian Publisher” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google Censors Guns… Searches for Water Guns, Guns and Roses, AR-15 Come up Blank

/0 Comments/in , /by

Google apparently has its own idea of gun control.

The search-engine giant reportedly censored any search results related to the word “gun” in its shopping section.

Any combination of words that used the term “gun” was censored until late Tuesday, leading to completely unrelated terms being impacted as well.

The full-fledged censorship ended up docking results for terms such as “glue gun,” “Guns and Roses” and even the word “burgundy.”

While the search restriction was eventually lifted for the word late Tuesday, the term “AR-15” and “revolver” appear to still be suppressed, according to Breitbart News.

Some took to Twitter to express their frustration with the search engine’s decision to censor words with “gun” in it and provide examples of how the stunt turned out.

In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, contributor Philip Wegmann noted that Google can do as they please since they are a private company.

However, he noted that the effort is ineffective, pointing to a 2013 piece by The Washington Post that revealed purchasing firearms on the internet is extremely difficult.

Wegmann concluded his piece by stating that Google’s “war on the gun was really quite silly and pointless.”

“The virtue-signaling stunt only exposed their own stupidity,” he added.

While Google’s recent attempt at gun censorship may appear to be a surprising one, it isn’t the first time the company has attempted to ban gun-related searches.

In 2012, Google notified merchants that they would not allow them to list firearms or firearm-related items on their shopping list, according to a 2012 report from Search Engine Land.

The letter Google sent to various merchants stated that they would “begin to enforce a set of new policies for Google Shopping in the coming weeks,” that included a list of prohibited products such as “guns, ammunition and knives.” (For more from the author of “Google Censors Guns… Searches for Water Guns, Guns and Roses, AR-15 Come up Blank” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google Caught Sponsoring Symposium for ‘Islamist Anti-Semites’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Google and YouTube have been caught sponsoring a symposium that featured a roster of “known Islamist anti-Semites,” and a widely recognized monitor of radical Islamic terror is wondering why.

“Why are Google and YouTube providing a forum for Islamists who approve of Shariah-imposed ‘death by stoning?’” asks Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“For more than two decades, the IPT has investigated the operations, funding, activities and front groups of Islamic terrorist and extremist groups in the United States and around the world. It has become a principal source of critical evidence to a wide variety of government offices and law enforcement agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress and numerous public policy forums,” his site explains.

Just now Emerson is asking why the web giants were lending their names and finances to an organization called Imams Online to hold a “Digital Summit.” . . .

Google, while lending its name to the pro-Islam event, also has been censoring pro-Israel voices, such as Prager University. Its YouTube company has “restricted access to Prager U’s pro-Israel videos and has removed dozens of other videos for no apparent reason other than Google does not like Prager’s politics,” IPT reports. (Read more from “Google Caught Sponsoring Symposium for ‘Islamist Anti-Semites'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google Harassing, Firing Employees For Politically Incorrect Speech

/0 Comments/in , /by

The firing of Google engineer James Damore for suggesting men are more suited to technical roles than women has triggered a culture war inside the Internet giant, with some Google employees saying the company is not doing enough to protect them from a harassment campaign that has subjected them to hateful comments and violent threats . . . [They claim they’ve been harassed] after screenshots were included in the 161-page lawsuit Damore filed in January alleging Google discriminates against whites, conservatives and men. . .

Google site reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones, a trans [man who dresses as a woman] who has been the target of a harassment campaign conducted by a group of “extremists” inside Google, says [he] knows “multiple” colleagues who were not contacted by human resources or who were told that the company couldn’t do anything about their concerns. . .

Members of the far right have escalated their campaign against Google and the tech industry in recent weeks. Chuck Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter in 2015 after tweeting about wanting to “take out” civil rights activist DeRay McKesson, filed a lawsuit against Twitter on the same day that Damore filed his against Google. That week, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas also released undercover videos of Twitter employees that it said showed the company is out to quash conservative voices. . .

That debate blew up last August when Damore’s memo leaked and he was eventually fired. . . In his memo, Damore wrote that while he did not oppose diversity, efforts to increase the number of women in technology were unlikely to succeed because in general, women are more interested in people than ideas. Women are also more prone to anxiety and less tolerant of stress, Damore said. (Read more from “Google Harassing, Firing Employees Politically Incorrect Speech” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google, Facebook May Have to Reveal Deepest Secrets

/0 Comments/in , /by

The investigations into Russia’s role in the 2016 election are threatening to pry the lid off tech companies’ most prized possessions: the secret inner workings of their online platforms.

As the probes unfold into social media’s role in spreading misinformation, U.S. lawmakers are beginning to show an interest in the mechanics of everything from how Facebook weights news items to how Google ranks search results. The questions, which echo European regulators’ interventionist approach to technology, are a stark change for Silicon Valley companies accustomed to deference from U.S. officials on how they run their operations.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, warned Sept. 24 about “the use of Facebook’s algorithms and the way it tends to potentially reinforce people’s informational bias.” He added, “This is a far broader issue than Russia, but one that we really need to know more about.”

A source close to the Senate Intelligence Committee said staff investigators are eager to learn whether Russian elements used Twitter to boost disinformation in Google’s search rankings. While Google has previously said it uses Twitter and Facebook links in calculating search rankings for content, it hasn’t revealed specifics on how social media mentions factor into its algorithm. Google is famously closemouthed about how its immensely valuable search engine works, only parceling out small clues over the years.

Critics of the tech industry say the time has come for the companies to let policymakers take a closer look. (Read more from “Google, Facebook May Have to Reveal Deepest Secrets” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.