The Truth is Taboo: Google's Silencing of Conservative Voices
Jun 07, 2024
Kelly Tshibaka and Niki Tshibaka
In this segment of STAND, Kelly and Niki discuss the explosive testimony of Google whistleblower Zach Voorhees before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs. Voorhees exposed Google's alleged efforts to interfere with elections and maintain a biased information landscape through its secret machine learning fairness program. The revelations suggest that Google targets conservative news outlets and ranks them lower in quality and trustworthiness compared to outlets that support Democrats. The two explain how tech giants are using their platforms to reshape culture and influence Americans' thinking, undermining democracy.
In this segment of STAND, Kelly and Niki discuss the explosive testimony of Google whistleblower Zach Voorhees before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs. Voorhees exposed Google's alleged efforts to interfere with elections and maintain a biased information landscape through its secret machine learning fairness program. The revelations suggest that Google targets conservative news outlets and ranks them lower in quality and trustworthiness compared to outlets that support Democrats. The two explain how tech giants are using their platforms to reshape culture and influence Americans' thinking, undermining democracy.
Welcome back to Stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka. We're excited to bring you this story. Thanks to our friends at the Next News Network for sharing this with us. Niki Tshibaka, I want to share this story with you and I want to get your thoughts on it.
Niki Tshibaka:
No problem, Kelly Tshibaka, all right.
Kelly Tshibaka:
So last Wednesday, the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs held this crucial hearing on maintaining election security, featuring explosive testimony from Google whistleblower Zach Voorhees, ryan Hartwig, a Facebook whistleblower, and Dr Robert Epstein and Dan Schneider, who's the vice president of the Media Research Center. In a shocking revelation, voorhees, who's a former Google engineer. He developed and delivered a bombshell testimony shedding light on Google's alleged efforts to interfere with elections and maintain a biased information landscape. Voorhees exposed Google's secret machine learning fairness program. If you haven't heard of it, he claims it's aimed at programming the public to align with the tech giant's corporate values. This is what he said. Watch this video.
Video:
Make no mistake, machine learning fairness is and has always been the real censorship program, and it is massive. The goal was to quote program the public to align with Google's corporate values. Those are their words. This was a four step process laid out by the AI ethicist, margaret Mitchell, who has since been fired for unethical behavior. Step one training data are collected and classified. Step two algorithms are programmed. Step three media are filtered, ranked, aggregated or generated. And step four people like us are programmed. That's a direct quote from their slides. It wasn't just in one slide, it was littered throughout the company. This process was repeated in a cycle. It was step four feeding back into step one. This sounds like something out of a conspiracy theory, but it's real. Google rewrote their news algorithms specifically trained on mainstream media stories targeting Trump, such as his fight with Comey. Systems like Real Time Events, real Time Boost and Hive Mind assigned higher amplification scores to stories related to targeting Trump. Google's internal documents revealed their stance on quote algorithmic unfairness.
Kelly Tshibaka:
So they stated that even factually accurate representations could be considered algorithmically unfair and removed. So let me just quote them. Quote Google for a minute, For example. Imagine a Google image query for CEOs shows predominantly men, which, by the way, Mr Tshibaka is true, I've been in those boardrooms. Even if it were a factually accurate representation of the world, it would be algorithmic unfairness. In some cases, it might even be appropriate to take no action if the system accurately reflects current reality, While in other cases it may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state via either product intervention or broader corporate social responsibility efforts. End quote. What that means is they would replace the pictures of all those men with pictures of diverse looking women to change what a boardroom looks like. Voorhees also alleged rampant censorship and bias. He said that Google is specifically targeting conservative news outlets.
Kelly Tshibaka:
Whoa shock, I know, but watch what he says here.
Video:
Let's talk about news ranking. News sites that supported Democrats were ranked with the highest quality and trustworthiness. Here's a partial list Wall Street Journal 8.53. Cbs News 6.57. Cnn 6.0. Fox News 5.2. Russia Today 4.57. The Young Turks 2.53. Alex Jones Network negative one point five six. At the bottom of the list is next news network, at negative three point three five. Let me reiterate the foreign propaganda outlet Russia Today was scored seven points higher than the next news network, one of the top YouTube news networks in America. Since my disclosure, next News Network has been permanently demonetized and will soon be bankrupted. These sound more like the actions we'd expect from a Russian propaganda complex, but, shockingly, it's the actions of Google.
Kelly Tshibaka:
So, according to Voorhees, who was invited to testify by the Heritage Foundation, Google employs blacklists, skewed search rankings and algorithmic unfairness in order to suppress right-leaning content. So then Voorhees calls for a subpoena to uncover Google's clandestine operations, which has never happened before, including this machine learning fairness program, the blacklists, media ranking documents and the decision process behind demonetizing Next News Network. When asked, what recommendations would you have for the legislature to take action to address the issues you address, this is what he said.
Video:
My recommendation is subpoenas would be filed against Google for any documents that have the name blacklisttxt related to Google, youtube and their news search corpuses. I would also ask that you subpoena their documents related to rankings of media outlets. I've provided a supplemental showing a slide deck including such a list that is four years old. It's a bit dated. The open question now is what are the updated rankings of the media outlets that they have? Also, machine learning fairness is so huge I don't even know how you would even swallow that, but if you could do ask them file a subpoena, ask them for documents related to machine learning fairness, and that is going to be such a huge bombshell that it just needs to get into the public disclosure. So it's those three things machine learning fairness, blacklists and their media rankings is just is the start of the entire.
Video:
What might be a really cheap way to get at this information is to ask what the decision process was for demonetizing Next News Network. Right, like they're very large and if you can get that information related to that case, I think that that's going to sort of illuminate what their decision-making processes were for that demonetization. Like they're still demonetized. They've been demonetized for like six months like the top conservative news network on YouTube, and the question is why did they get demonetized? And if we have the answer to that, we're going to get the answers to a whole bunch of other censorship activities with the company.
Kelly Tshibaka:
And then, right after that, senator Brian Hughes took bold action and he ordered the subpoenas. So, in response to shocking revelations from Google whistleblower Zach Voorhees, the Senate Committee on State Affairs unanimously voted to authorize subpoenas to big tech firms like Facebook and Google. But one of my favorite parts of the story is how Voorhees reacted, because he made these disclosures clear as a whistleblower, like many years ago I want to say it was like five years ago, if you've been following this story and nothing's happened. It's gotten a lot of media coverage, but otherwise no action's been taken. So check out this video of him on his Twitter account, where he has his reaction to what the Texas legislature did.
Video:
I just want you guys to know that it's been five years of fighting and I've got nothing but media to show for it until today, the Senate the Texas Senate has finally taken legal action and authorized subpoenas, and I'm so happy. It's been five years and now this has come out of nowhere, and I just hope and pray that other state senates will take up the call and investigate these big tech companies. You deserve a democracy and a representation and your vote, and these people are trying to subvert it, and I couldn't live with myself knowing that this was happening. Thank you for everyone who's believed in me through the years. I feel like we're on the verge of something absolutely huge and, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you so much.
Kelly Tshibaka:
So Voorhees exposed Google's alleged bias and censorship, specifically targeting conservative news outlets like Next News Network, which has been demonetized for over six months as a result of what YouTube and Google have done.
Kelly Tshibaka:
Presented in this hearing suggests that these tech giants impose their own biases to manipulate and stifle dissenting voices, undermining the very foundation of our democratic process. There seems to be a theme here. Senator Hughes and the committee made it clear, though, that Texas isn't going to stand for this while these big tech giants threaten the integrity of our elections, it's time for big tech to answer for their actions and face consequences for their alleged election interference. I'm really proud of Texas and the stand that they took, and I really hope other states do the same. As Texas continues its investigation into election security and the role of big tech, voorhees testimony has actually ignited a fierce debate around the need for transparency and accountability in the tech industry. Our integrity of elections is at stake, so it's crucial that the public remains informed and vigilant, and it's our prayer that this compels YouTube to re-monetize Next News Network and any other of the conservative channels that were monetized for years until truth became treason. In this empire of lies, Niki Tshibaka comments.
Niki Tshibaka:
In this empire of lies, Niki Tshibaka comments Wow, well, I mean, it doesn't come as any surprise that they've been doing this.
Niki Tshibaka:
We know that they've been doing this for a while. It's just, it's not. It's great that there is teeth to all of this and it's beginning to pick up steam. I think that more than the integrity of our elections is at stake, right, because this is more than just about the elections. They are using these search engines and these social media platforms to, as part of an of an approach, to reshape our culture, to reshape how people think, and they're using their algorithms to influence us, and I think it's dangerous, it's super dangerous. And it's not just dangerous. It also is part of what is undermining our democracy, right, when you have a tech giant that is basically unfettered and seems to have unfettered power to do whatever it wants in influencing how Americans think and shaping how Americans think using their own personal biases wow, I mean, that's dark, that's 1984.
Kelly Tshibaka:
Right. These standards also are not apparent and clear in the community. Use standards right.
Niki Tshibaka:
Yep.
Kelly Tshibaka:
No hate speech, no bullying. Also nothing that we agree with politically.
Kelly Tshibaka:
But I recently was watching a clip from an interesting podcast called Leaving the Left for Liberty and she was making the interesting point that she was re-chronicling all of the things that Google and YouTube have suppressed, for example, the lab leak theory that the COVID virus actually originated from a lab in Wuhan, china, and for the longest time that was a taboo thing to say on social media, and if you said that on YouTube or you said that on one of the social media platforms, your posts were taken down, your channel was demonetized, you were blacklisted because that was considered something absolutely fabricated and misinformation. And she said now that's considered widely corroborated information. That's a fact, we know that the COVID virus came from the Wuhan lab, and so here we actually have. She cited several but proven examples where they punished Americans, demonetized them, which means killing, in many cases, people's jobs and livelihoods.
Niki Tshibaka:
Businesses right During a crisis that was already killing other businesses.
Kelly Tshibaka:
During a public health crisis, where people needed critical information because they were pushing an agenda of information and suppressing free speech. That actually turned out to be true. They were the ones perpetuating and peddling the misinformation and disinformation, intentionally and dangerously, often in corroboration with the federal government. This is what we're actually talking about, and so the fact that it has taken this Google engineer whistleblower years, half a decade to get one state legislature to subpoena Google for its recent records. He made the point. I don't know where things are with the machine learning program and the blacklist and everything now, but things are probably updated and changed.
Kelly Tshibaka:
We need so many states to jump on this bandwagon. I would love to see the Department of Justice jump on it, but I think that's unlikely under this current administration. But again, november is just around the corner, y'all, and we've got such a great opportunity for we, the people, to do something about it here at Stand. We believe in freedom and truth and government by the people, and that's the things that we stand for. So this is another story we wanted to bring you on an issue we can take a stand on. These elections are important, and so is holding big tech accountable.
Niki Tshibaka:
Free thinking is the most important thing that we have and the greatest check on power that's out there. That's why the First Amendment is the First Amendment free speech right.
Kelly Tshibaka:
It's the most important. So we're up against a break. We'll be so happy to see you right after this Stand by with Niki and Kelly Tshibaka. We're at standshoworg. That's where you can get your tickets to see Alan Dershowitz live in Alaska on June 27th. If you're in Anchorage, fantastic. If not, what a great time to come to Alaska for a vacation and see us. We have limited tickets available, standshoworg. Pick up your tickets today and make sure to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube on our social media channels. We'd love to have you as one of our standouts. We'll be right back after this.
