Google’s algorithm has ‘likely been determining’ election outcomes since 2015: report

This was recently highlighted by well-known American psychologist, professor, and author Robert Epstein, who in June 2019 warned the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution that Big Tech companies such as Google wield a massive amount of power with their abilities to “shift opinions and votes without people’s awareness.”

Epstein was so prominent in his field that he was once the editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.

As UncoverDC detailed, Epstein, who has described himself as “center/center-left [his] whole adult life,” has been gathering data from Google since 2016 and says it has created a “monopoly on search” with a bias that has become a part of its “passive monitoring systems.”

Epstein put out a scientific paper on this “search engine manipulation effect” in 2015, after first beginning to study the concept in 2013, according to UncoverDC.

According to the paper, "Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015." Epstein also noted that the effects of "Russian-placed ads or fake news stories" pale in comparison to manipulations by Google.

Google's rigged search algorithm has probably tilted millions of voters to the Democrats, according to Epstein. He also says it impacts elections more than many other efforts that could change results, including ballot harvesting, incorrect registration rolls, machine tampering, and even censorship seen via partnerships between social media platforms and government agencies.

In his testimony, Epstein detailed several moments where Google had allegedly influenced millions of votes.

In 2016, for instance, “biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom [he] supported).”

Later on, a Go Vote reminder displayed on Google's home page for midterm election day in November 2018 was said to give “one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party.”

Epstein also pointed out that Google conducts “massive surveillance operations—most of which people are completely unaware.”

The longtime academic and author maintains that "Google presents a serious threat to democracy and human autonomy" and that its monopoly must be destroyed in order for elections to be free and fair once again.