
Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat [pdf] - sprucely
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf
======
slg
Dr. Robert Epstein might very well have a valid complaint, but it seems like
he has had an ax to grind with Google going back years. His site was hacked in
2012 and Google put up a warning as a result and he was not happy about it
[1]. Maybe coincidentally, later that year Epstein started publicly
criticizing Google and calling for them to be regulated [2]. He also started
sounding the alarm about election interference years before the 2016 election
[3]. If Dr Epstein is leading a conversation about Google's biases, I think it
is only fair to also discuss whether Dr Epstein's himself is biased against
Google.

[1] - [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and-
expert...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and-experts-
weigh-in-on-a-site-owner-vs-google/)

[2] - [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-
privacy_b_1962827](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-privacy_b_1962827)

[3] - [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google-
di...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google-did-not-rig-
indian-elections)

~~~
chibg10
Does Dr. Epstein stake any of his claims on his personal credibility in his
article? Why not attack the substance of the article instead of going with the
the classic "slander the opposition" play that all kinds of disingenuous
actors regularly employ? This post sounds like something I used to hear from
Lance Armstrong's camp or from authoritarian propaganda.

For all I know you're part of a FUD campaign from Google. Dr. Epstein's paper
may well be nonsense for all I know but this post adds nothing to the
discussion.

~~~
solidasparagus
The entire basis of his testimony is his personal credibility. He literally
only references his own research and the core evidence he relies on is his
research findings. Some of which looks questionable to my not-very-
knowledgeable eyes, so it's very useful to know about Epstein's past
relationship with Google.

Lines that stand out are:

\- "Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent
of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015"

\- "In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google’s search
results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of
the 113 million people who voted in the election)

\- "Google’s “Go Vote” prompt was not a public service; it was a vote
manipulation"

\- "To let Big Tech companies get away with invisible manipulation on this
scale would be to abandon the free-and-fair election. It would make democracy
meaningless, even if your chosen candidate prevailed."

~~~
slg
>"In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google’s search
results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of
the 113 million people who voted in the election)

You are misinterpreting what he is saying there. That same thing tripped me up
too on first glance because the 78.2 million number seemed ridiculously high.
He is referring to votes and not people who voted. If there were 10 items on
your ballet and he thinks Google may have influence you, he is counting that
as 10 votes and not 1 person voting. There is nothing technically wrong with
displaying the number that way, but it seems so misleading that it makes me
question if it was intentionally chosen to make the problem sound worse. It is
decisions like that which make me doubt his neutrality in presenting the data.

~~~
solidasparagus
You're right, thanks for clarifying.

I agree - it doesn't feel like the most honest way to represent that data and
I doubt that subtlety came through in his testimony for congress.

------
malcolmhere
This is such garbage. If you clickthrough on this guy's "research", you'll
find that he objects to Google's "Go Vote Today" reminder is unfair
politically because:

\- It increases voter turnout across the board (which favors Democrats
marginally) \- Google users tend to be younger (and hence more left-leaning)

Google has many questionable practices, but simply reminding people when it is
an election day is not one of them

~~~
oska
To play devil's advocate: What role does a for-profit advertising company have
in encouraging people to vote? And what are their motives in doing so?

Disclaimer: I haven't read the pdf (only responding to your comment) and don't
really hold a strong position on this question, other than being sceptical of
Google's participation in any political process.

~~~
ajross
To devil's advocate your devil's advocacy: let's just assume Google is
encouraging people to vote because they know that more democrats will see that
message, that they want democrats to win, and that's the only reason for them
doing so.

What is wrong with that, and how would you propose to fix it via a mechanism
that didn't also e.g. outlaw FOX News?

~~~
mc32
To play devil's advocate to your advocacy of the devil's advocate, what if
Exxon or a right-leaning org offered discounts to people who "promise to vote
Republican". Nothing binding, simply an unenforceable promise (gentleman's or
lady's agreement) to vote for a party in exchange for a 20% discount on your
fuel.

~~~
ajross
> what if Exxon or a right-leaning org offered discounts to people who
> "promise to vote Republican"

Vote selling is election fraud, which is a crime. Anyone who took those
discounts would go to jail. Sounds fair to me.

I don't see how "Please vote" is remotely comparable to vote buying. Can you
elaborate?

~~~
ikeyany
A better example would be what if Google gave out 'I Voted!' awards that, upon
proof that you voted, gave you access to special Google features.

~~~
ajross
OK, I guess. But... they don't. So what's the argument here?

------
akersten
There is a serious and concerted effort to disparage the large tech companies
lately on this platform and others. It isn't about anti-trust, or any benefit
to the consumer either, although it may be dressed up that way. It's about
forcing private companies to be platforms for radical views, and to self-
censor and be disallowed from having their own political opinions and
operating policies.

The government should be hands-off here. Look only to the fact that they're
not investigating Microsoft, Walmart, or the ISPs, to realize that this is
targeted political harassment.

~~~
prepend
How is this related to forcing private companies to be platforms for radical
views?

Should the private gas company be forced to be platforms for radical views?

~~~
mulmen
The accusation is that _only_ private companies _with platforms for speech_
are being targeted.

~~~
akvadrako
How is that an accusation? That's the whole point.

------
mmcconnell1618
"On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet
for 40 minutes." \- Please explain how Google created a denial of service
attack on the entire internet for 40 minutes. Clearly, Dr. Epstein believes
that the only way to access the internet is through a search engine.

~~~
justinclift
BGP misconfiguration?

------
rdtsc
> On Election Day in 2018, the “Go Vote” reminder Google displayed on its home
> page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes
> than it gave the other party

Interesting. I assumed they displayed those for everyone. Did any
whistleblowers come up saying how they decided who to show that and who to not
show that message? Because if they only picked out voters they assumed would
vote Democrat that would be troubling. Though, I guess it is tempting to say,
they are using their resources however they see fit, but even then I'd at
least hope they are transparent and clear were they stand, and not try to
pretend to be unbiased.

> A growing body of evidence suggests that Google employees deliberately
> engineer ephemeral experiences to change people’s thinking.

Does anyone from Google here even knows about or heard the phrase "ephemeral
experiences"? Search suggestions I guess could change people's opinions, but I
am not sure about the deliberate manipulation part, and that it's concerted
internal effort.

~~~
gundmc
Google did show it to everyone. If you follow the link and read his
"analysis", his argument boils down to the assertion that Google users overall
are left of center so reminding Google users to vote unfairly benefits
Democrats. Furthermore, he argues that Google could theoretically remind only
subsections of the population and in doing so skew the vote more significantly
at some point in the future.

Frankly the whole letter and article is quite conspiratorial and backed up
only by references to his own equally bombastic claims.

~~~
prepend
It is quite conspiratorial. It’s really hard for Google to prove they didn’t
do this as it’s proving a negative.

I think the argument boils down to since they are capable of doing so, and no
one would be able to tell if they did; therefore search must be open to
prevent such potential actions.

Google has been caught doing things like favoring inferior shopping searches
to point to their own products. So maybe it is possible to detect and not as
much of a risk.

------
wyck
Google search has gone down the proverbial shithole in the last 2 years, and
has been struggling long before that. Even for non political searches it
returns horrible results. It's a threat in the short-term, and then it will be
replaced since the algorithm is falling apart.

~~~
akvadrako
It's been getting worse for way more than 2 years. Remember when google would
honor quotes and the plus sign to force those terms to appear in the results?

~~~
jhanschoo
Can I have an example where quotes are not honored?

To force a certain spelling even for a single word, enclose it in quotes.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
>A worldwide network of passive monitoring systems must be built to protect
humanity and democracy from manipulations by today’s Google and the Googles of
tomorrow.

Yeah no thanks.

~~~
outworlder
Right. Feral cats are a problem, so let's release tigers to take care of them.

"Monitoring systems" are exactly why Google and similar companies are a
problem.

------
drtillberg
If even a fraction of the allegations in the PDF are true, wouldn't Google be
exposed to a campaign finance compliance issue?

Or, to put it in another way, since these corporations are just giant buckets
of money sloshing around, wouldn't it be true that pretty much any political
activism they incorporate into their business operations would have the
potential to be considered an election-influencing political contribution?

------
4ntonius8lock
It seems to me that Epstein is far more annoyed that bad things are working
against things he cares about, than that bad things are happening.

Many people have been very concerned with Google's monopolistic power over the
economy.

Literally the difference in these two auto completes, can mean a make or break
most businesses: brand name is... scam brand name is... great

Add to that google has been unjustly pushing it's own sites to the top and you
have blatant market manipulation, even if it doesn't conform to the legal
definition of this term, it definitively conforms to the spirit of the law.

That never bothered Mr Epstein.

But as soon as he can give it a political spin, all of a sudden this power and
its abuse are an issue.

And even then it is so narrow and in a space so rife with bias that it's hard
to take seriously. I mean, the major networks don't even feature 3rd party
candidates in the debate. And yet I don't hear him crying bias. I'm pretty
sure media bias is way more pervasive and swings more elections than google or
Facebook has ever done.

The issue at hand should be Google's monopoly on search, it's blatant bias and
the oversize power that gives them. If you pick up on specifics and not
address the wider issue, I'm going to have to wonder why.

------
nickodell
>In 2016, 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.

This is the most important claim that he makes, and as far as I can tell, he
gives zero backing for it.

He has two citations. The first citation is a paper showing that re-ordering
search results to show links to articles that favor candidate A will cause
readers to favor candidate A. The second citation does not give any
explanation for the 2.6 million figure.

\----

Let's take a look at the second citation:
[https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift-
mil...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift-millions-of-
votes-in-the-november-elections-without-anyone-knowing_2671195.html)

>I found pro-Clinton bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of
Google’s search results. [...] Because, as I noted earlier, Google’s search
algorithm is not constrained by equal-time rules, it almost certainly ends up
favoring one candidate over another in most political races, and that shifts
opinions and votes.

This is literally true but realistically meaningless. Suppose that there are
two candidates for office, A and B. Days before the election, it is revealed
that candidate A fucks dogs. The news publishes many articles about candidate
A fucking dogs. Google places those articles highly in search results, and
many voters see them.

Has Google shown pro-candidate B bias by showing those articles? Obviously
not. Unless Epstein can show that a viewpoint-neutral ranking would have
produced a different result, what he has is meaningless.

------
betterunix2
Full disclosure: I work on cryptography for Google, nothing related to this
particular article.

These claims are a bit...much. In the 2016 election, which was characterized
by media manipulation and fake news stories, Google's results, according to
his analysis, seemed to skew favorably toward Clinton. How do you even control
for all the confounding factors here? Maybe Google is just better at weeding
out misinformation than Bing, resulting in fewer negative stories about
Clinton (or fewer positive stories about Trump).

Then in 2018 Google _threatened democracy_ by telling people to go out and
vote, which _clearly_ is an act of voter manipulation by Google in Dr.
Epstein's view. In that same election, Dr. Epstein claims that Google's
results were biased in favor of one party; yet in that same election, one
party's talking points were divorced from reality, so any search algorithm
than favors truthfulness would have to favor the other party.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
An algorithm cannot favor truthfulness but only a certain definition of
truthfulness. And that definition is not the thing itself.

------
joshuwa
Robert Epstein - the self citing author of that testimony - had his website
flagged as a security threat by Google a few yeas back and he's been on a
vendetta ever since.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Google)

------
bogwog
I really like his idea for making Google's search index a public commons.
Google search is by far their most popular product in terms of traffic, it's
one of the most controversial and easily abused, and it's not even their main
revenue stream. Google can survive without search, and the internet would be
better off if there was more competition.

The only issue I see is how would you make sure other smaller companies aren't
providing biased search results too? His idea for having a monitoring system
sounds like a privacy nightmare for users. At least you can regulate the hell
out of Google and have actual audits. Doing the same for thousands of search
engines isn't easy.

~~~
UncleMeat
The index isn't the hard part, it is the ranking. The proposal also makes
basically all forms of anti abuse impossible.

------
argv_empty
Epstein's argument seems to assume that any information which shifts an
undecided person's view is biased. Basic chemistry lessons make the claims of
homeopaths seem downright silly. Does that mean that teaching chemistry is
biased against homeopathy, or is homeopathy just not all that great an idea?

Well, perhaps that definition of bias is specific to strictly political topics
rather than questions about the observable effects of various actions. Even
so, by the standard of shifting views a certain direction, does Google present
as much of a threat to democracy as higher education does?

------
dang
Recent and related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079)

------
Adishetu
There’s no threat to our democracy, if that’s the case then that means it’s a
weak mindset and that the only truth, because it’s a dangerous deadly and
downright demonic ideology. So abort democracy in order to avoid the sixth
birthing of feminism. They both gotta go and get with Islam, just read Quran
and Sunnah. What has DeMoCracy actual achieve if not causing confusion and
delay???

------
antpls
Google doesn't pose more threat than any other big recognized brands that
people trust.

It's all about trust. If people trust more Google or Apple than the legacy
system, then maybe these brands earned people trust by also doing good things
(sometime) ? Of course they have now a great responsability.

------
projektfu
What kind of scholar doesn't have any references to something he didn't write?
Surely Epstein's not the only scholar in the field of search engine effects.

------
stretchwithme
The electoral system in the US has so many other gigantic flaws. It is only
wracked by such controversies because it so bad at representing the interests
of the voters.

~~~
TomMckenny
In this case there is zero such interest. It's just a focused shakedown of
companies that contribute to the opposing party at an equal or greater rate
than the ruling party.

------
IOT_Apprentice
Youtube "recommendations"? Sure. Facebook? Absolutely.

------
outworlder
Why is Google in particular an issue and not, say, Facebook?

------
thoughtstheseus
Someone call Jaron.

------
VMG
what an odd endorsement of Google

------
tracker1
Frankly, a lot of this is worrisome. I lean libertarian/centrist/classic-
liberal in terms of my views. Lately I feel that even trying to engage with
anyone to the left is an effort in futility. Especially in Pacific-Coast tech
companies. Reason doesn't seem to matter, only feelings.

I was blocked on twitter for nearly a week, while they reviewed my challenge
and judged against me, for posting anti-violence messages of all things.

I can't help but feel if the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are
censoring otherwise legal and non-violent content in favor of a political
ideology, they deserve to lose section 230 protections.

~~~
pacala
Google/Twitter/Facebook are the ultimate stage in media consolidation. 3 mega-
corporations controlling the information feeds for the vast majority of people
in the world. Even with the best intentions, I can't see how this arrangement
can fare well. The amount of power wielded is just astonishing.

In historical context, US media has been undergoing a unabated consolidation
for the past 3 decades. "In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50
companies; as of 2011, 90% was controlled by just 6 companies and in 2017 the
number was 5.",
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership#Recent_media_mergers_in_the_United_States).

~~~
sjg007
I don't think they are exercising their power like they should be. Google and
YouTube should delist Foxnews.com for promoting hate content, same with
Facebook.

~~~
tracker1
Should CNN be delisted for hosting a racist Nazi last week?

~~~
sjg007
Maybe they should practice what was the equal time rule / coverage.

