- Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.
- Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google’s interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of more than three times that size.
- If Google had not interfered in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP would likely have ended up with a Senate majority of at least two seats.
- The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years – as some of their prominent insiders have stated – have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.
- The techniques we have discovered – the Search Engine Manipulation Effect, the Answer Bot Effect, the Targeted Messaging Effect, and others – can easily shift the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by between 20% and 80% after just one manipulation. Google can also repeat these manipulations many times over a period of months prior to an election.
- Assuming the effects of these techniques are additive, Google can likely produce even larger shifts in opinions and voting preferences than the ones from a single manipulation used just once.
- Google also knows exactly who is vulnerable to these manipulations – who is still undecided before Election Day, for example – so they can target and bombard just the right people on a massive scale 24 hours a day.
- Our research has shown repeatedly that the manipulations used can make them invisible to people, and can often produce shifts of 40% or more in the voting preferences of undecided voters without anyone having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. They feel free, even while they are being strongly controlled. As one journalist wrote, “It really is the perfect crime.”
- Finally, our research measures the influence of “ephemeral experiences” — their term — meaning content that is seen briefly, affects the user, and then disappears forever, leaving no paper trail for authorities to trace, Most online content – search results, newsfeeds, video sequence, and so on – are ephemeral.
- Can Google deliberately use ephemeral content to manipulate people? You bet. If you doubt that, read this 2018 article from the Wall Street Journal about some leaked emails from the company.
- In the days leading up to the 2022 midterms, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology… preserved overwhelming evidence of Google’s manipulations on their search engine, on their video recommendations on YouTube (owned by Google), and even on their homepage on Election Day. On that day in Florida, for example, 100% of liberals received go-vote reminders on their version of Google’s homepage, but only 59% of conservatives did.
Read More: ‘The Perfect Crime’: Tech Companies Are Manipulating Our Elections and Indoctrinating Our Children — How We Can Stop Them
