According to an exclusive report from The Daily Caller, Google employees toyed with burying conservative media sites in search results after Trump’s election in 2016.
TDC obtained internal correspondence which showed employees considered targeting The Daily Caller and Breitbart, among other right-leaning media sites.
If they labeled conservative sites “opinion blogs,” those sites would tank in search results, as priority is given to news sites, or so the discussion went.
From TDC:
Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.“I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources – because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued.“Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.”Some of Byer’s colleagues expressed concern that manipulating search results could backfire and suggested alternative measures.
This video pretty much says it all:
For our previous coverage of Google’s hostility toward conservatives and conservative sites, see:
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