An undercover video which cites a Google employee saying that the tech giant is intent on controlling “what is and isn’t important,” and captures a Google executive saying it “is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again,” was removed by YouTube.
The Project Veritas video, which can still be seen on its website, was pulled by YouTube after alleged “privacy complaints.”
“We have strong privacy guidelines in place, including the ability to file a complaint if someone feels their privacy has been violated,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. “When complaints are received, we may also provide the uploader a chance to remove or edit private information in their video.”
Related: Google official: Don’t break us up; Smaller companies can’t prevent ‘next Trump situation’, June 24, 2019
YouTube’s removal of the video only goes to affirm the video’s point, columnist Jeff Lord wrote for The American Spectator.
“As if eager to prove exactly the point of the blockbuster Project Veritas video that shows Google determined to manipulate the 2020 election, the Google-owned YouTube has now banned the Project Veritas video that shows two Google employees discussing just why and how the manipulation will be done,” Lord wrote.
Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Donald Trump, wrote for USA Today on June 25 that “If something vaguely conservative and intellectually stimulating manages to get past Google’s content gatekeepers, they just remove it. YouTube routinely demonetizes, restricts and censors conservative content. One target of YouTube was Dennis Prager’s PragerU, which had 40 of its videos restricted. Prager sued the social media video giant this year following these unfounded restrictions. YouTube has also been known for banning pro-life videos.”
Parscale said of tech giants such as Google and Facebook: “Without any sort of democratic mandate, these companies have appointed themselves the arbiters of acceptable thought, discussion and searches online. These companies’ pervasive command of the internet — and blatant desire to control how we interact with it — is a direct threat to a free society. And arguably the worst offender is Google.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, issued a statement saying “Google should not be deciding whether content is important or trivial and they most assuredly should not be meddling in our election process. They need their immunity stripped…”
Meanwhile, “Google and the social media titans have virtually confiscated the national advertising market and furthermore attempt to regulate readership traffic flow to independent publishers,” said Robert Morton, president of FreePressFoundation.org.”
In the video, Google exectuve Jen Gennai urged lawmakers not to break up Google, saying it would “make it worse” because smaller companies “will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation,” but she said later that she was referring to foreign interference in the 2016 election.
Gennai repsponded to the video, saying, “I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done.”
Writing for The American Spectator, columnist Dan Flynn noted that Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe “demonstrates the bias of Google’s algorithm by typing in ‘men can’ on the company’s search engine. Google spits back ‘men can have babies,’ ‘men can have periods,’ and ‘men can get pregnant.’ These search results do not reflect the popularity of those phrases in searches. Instead, it demonstrates Google trying to nudge users to search for phrases that people do not generally search on their own.”
When O’Keefe searches “Hillary Clinton’s emails are,” Google does not autocomplete. When O’Keefe does the same for “Donald Trump’s emails,” Google autocompletes for a number of possibilities. “Since many, many people search for Hillary Clinton’s emails, and very few searches for Donald Trump’s emails, the search results should show the opposite. But someone overrode an algorithm to rig searches,” Flynn noted.
“What’s scary is that Google is deciding what is important and what is not important,” the anonymous Google insider says in the Project Veritas video. “They are going through and effectively deleting conversations form the national narrative. It reminds me of a book called Nineteen Eighty-Four. That should have been a warning. Nineteen Eight-Four should not be a user manual on how to run society.”
Google, Flynn noted, “does not want you to see” the video, “which should make you want to watch it more. I watched the whole thing. This says something given that my nature makes it nearly impossible to sit and watch something that lasts nearly an hour. Do watch.”