Internal video shows Google leaders lamenting Hillary's loss
Just days after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the race for President, the leaders of the world's largest search engine gathered for a company-wide meeting. Some choked back tears as they described the election results.
It was recorded.
And that video was leaked to Breitbart this week. (That it went to Breitbart, of all sites, is quite an indictment on the legacy media outlets.)
It has barely broken through as a new story in the public consciousness - although it's getting a lot of attention among conservative media.
The CBS affiliate in Google's backyard framed it as "conservatives pounce" in their headline: Leaked Google Video Fuels Conservative Claims Of Political Bias From Tech Giants
The attached story comes from CNN:
(CNN Money) — A video showing Google’s top executives perturbed by the election of President Donald Trump was leaked on Wednesday to the far-right website Breitbart, intensifying a swell of erroneous claims from Republicans that technology companies are biased against conservatives.
The hour-long video captured Google executives, who were speaking at a regular weekly meeting that is streamed to employees across the world, lamenting the election of Trump because it stood in contrast to some of the company’s values.
CNN immediately dismisses the claims of conservatives that tech companies are biased, yet provides no evidence to refute those claims - which DO have support.
CNN also helps Google by qualifying the objections as being "in contrast to some of the company's values." When I watched it, I thought the leaders made it clear that Trump represented everything company was opposed to. It wasn't a contrast to some of the company's values. It was to all of the company's values.
Prior to the leaking of the video, it was no secret that some of Google’s executives held liberal views. The video, however, did not provide any evidence that would indicate Google as a search engine discriminates against users based on their political views.
There's that word again -- "some."
As in, "SOME of Google's executives held liberal views."
Every single leader who spoke at the meeting were progressives. Every one of them.
One leader even suggested that Trump's victory was due to certain voters being so bored that they turned to evil ideologies.
But this assessment from CNN is very much missing the forest for the trees.
The video alone does not prove that the company has bias infecting everything it does. But, rather, how the corporate structure is so insulated in its own ideological echo chamber that it is ill-equipped to even identify whether there is bias.
CNN's story indicates they share this same blind spot.
As a reminder, research has proven that Google can swing elections. It may already happened in India.
Our new research leaves little doubt about whether Google has the ability to control voters. In laboratory and online experiments conducted in the United States, we were able to boost the proportion of people who favored any candidate by between 37 and 63 percent after just one search session. The impact of viewing biased rankings repeatedly over a period of weeks or months would undoubtedly be larger.
So, yes, the political ideology of the leaders of the most powerful tech company on the planet is a concern. It should be.
And it would be if it were run by the Koch brothers.
But, wait! There's more!
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Former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, expected to plead guilty to remaining charges.
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