Oops! Google does it again

Good day all. Google, or as many call it, Googlag, once had the motto, “Don’t be evil.” These days, all Googlag is, is evil. Once again, they have been caught playing games with search results that don’t favor their chosen political beliefs.

Last time Googlag was caught out, they had fired someone for having the nerve to question the soviet orthodoxy that is Google’s hiring and promotion practices. This was followed up with another instance where Googlag used it’s influence to get someone fired who criticized Google.

Once again, Googlag has stuck their wedding tackle into a meat grinder. They have bee caught out posting search results that call anyone who is a Republican a Nazi or racist. Here are the details from Vice News. (You sure won’t find anything about in the Mostly Soviet Media):

Less than a week before the California primary, Google listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party.

In the “knowledge panel” that provides easy access to information next to search results, Google was showing “Nazism” as an “ideology” of the party as of Thursday morning. The word “Nazism” was hyperlinked to a secondary page that shows “Nazism” alongside other “ideologies” of California Republicans like “Conservatism,” “Market liberalism,” “Fiscal conservatism,” and “Green conservatism.”

Voters looking for information by searching “California Republicans” or “California Republican Party” were getting “Nazism” next to their search results until Google took the listing down later Thursday after a query from VICE News.

In other words, when they were once again caught out slandering people.

The listing is provoking outrage among Republicans who already believe Silicon Valley tech giants are stacking the deck against them.

“It is disgraceful that the world’s largest search engine has labeled millions of California Republicans as Nazis,” said Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Majority Leader and potential successor to Speaker Paul Ryan. “This is just the latest incident in a disturbing trend to slander conservatives. These damaging actions must be held to account. The bias has to stop.”

“It is libelous, and Wikipedia and Google should take more ownership of what is published on their sites, since both companies just said 5 million Californians support Nazism,” said Cynthia Bryant, executive director of the California Republican Party. “It is unfortunate, but is unlikely to affect the election because anyone with common sense knows we don’t support Nazism.”

Considering that this information came up on the “Knowledge Panels” and those are maintained by Google, I think they have a few questions to answer. Of course, Googlag is denying they did anything wrong.

Google’s “knowledge panels” are automatically populated from a variety of sources, including Wikipedia. “Sometimes people vandalize public information sources, like Wikipedia, which can impact the information that appears in search,” a Google spokesperson said, in a statement. “We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened here.”

The spokesperson stressed that the “Nazism” listing was not due to any manual change by any Google employee and that the company does not manipulate search results to favor any political ideology over another.

Google’s mislabeling also fuels Republican fears that tech platforms are biased against conservatives. Over the past several months, Republican leaders have increasingly been accusing Big Tech of censoring conservative voices.

Well of course they are. These “Titans of Technology” are nothing more then flat out totalitarians who, because they came up with something people like to use, think they are smarter then everyone else and should be running things. Almost none of them consider themselves Americans and support the traditions of this nation. They consider themselves to be “Citizens of the world” and silly things like borders, individuality and freedom are bad ideas.

While I am generally opposed to government actions when it comes to dealing with companies, when they start pulling this sort of thing, it’s time to start looking at trust busting. I honestly don’t know how you could break up Google or Facebook. It’s not like being able to break up AT&T in the 80’s or even Comcast today. However, it might be possible to change the libel laws in some way. Getting slapped in the wallet a few times will get their attention. Unlike the EU’s GDPR crap, it will be citizens going after Googlag.

Thatisall