Forget stolen ballots or Krakens that never arrive. If anything changed the outcome of the 2020 election, it was Big Tech interference — and there’s nothing to say it won’t happen again in 2024.
Close to home, we saw the suppression of The Post’s October 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s laptop by Twitter and Facebook, which were manipulated by embedded FBI operatives, and kept Biden voters in the dark about the nature of the man they were supporting.
In the landmark free speech case, Missouri v. Biden, we saw how the federal government secretly coerced social media to censor speech that dissents from official thinking on everything from the origins of COVID-19, climate change and the efficacy of masks to gender identity and the war in Ukraine.
‘Mind control machine’
Then there is the $1 trillion multinational tech monopoly Google, which has been described as the ultimate “mind control machine.”
Google is supposed to be a neutral platform and enjoys all the legal protections of a public utility, much like the pipes delivering water to our homes.
Instead, its algorithms secretly manipulate search rankings to control opinions, whether it’s what you buy or what you know about a politician.
It’s hard to pin down Google’s bias because search results are ephemeral, but MRC Free Speech America gave it a shot this week, by recording Google search results for “Republican presidential campaign websites” on the eve of Wednesday night’s Republican primary debate.
Lo and behold, only two candidates popped up on the first, crucial page of search results Monday, and only one was a Republican: Will Hurd, a little-known never-Trumper from Texas, who doesn’t even have enough support to make it onto the debate stage.
There was no sign of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Tim Scott or Chris Christie.
But there was one other candidate who showed up on Page 1 of the Republican search results: fringe Democrat Marianne Williamson, whose RealClearPolitics average doesn’t even reach 5%. Maybe that’s Google’s idea of “balance.”
It was a different story when the MRC searched for “Democrat presidential campaign websites.”
Here, the results were logical, with front-runner Joe Biden’s campaign website topping Google’s first search page.
Williamson scored another appearance, with her website slotting into number two behind Biden. But Biden’s most dangerous challenger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was nowhere to be seen on the first page, despite the fact his RealClearPolitics average is 15%, and his support is as high as 25% among Democrats, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.
“The Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton” did appear on Google’s first page, in 10th place, with “Elizabeth Warren for Senate” in 14th. Ironically, just above Warren was a link to a report on an Iranian website: ”Google Hiding Websites of Trump, Other Biden challengers.”
Skewed first page
The MRC points out that less than 1% of users ever click past the first page of search results. If you are not on the first page, you basically don’t exist in Google’s world.
Its analysis is just a snapshot of a moment, although it also tried the experiment on Sept. 20 with similar results.
But for real science, research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, a California Democrat with a Harvard PhD, has preserved a database of 42 million ephemeral search results gathered from 8,000 registered voters, who gave him permission to record their every Google interaction.
He also finds that Google elevates liberal views and stifles dissenters, in a way which will have an impact on undecided voters in the 2024 election.
It’s not hard to see whom Google favors for president in 2024: the same guy it rooted for in 2020, Biden.
Despite the censorship outrages revealed in Missouri v. Biden, the “disinformation” industry is doubling down, and the constellation of NGOs and universities which act as censorship proxies to allow the federal government to skirt the First Amendment are gearing up to interfere in another election.
They get away with it because, as a RealClearPolitics poll found this week, nearly half of Democrats (47%) support censorship, and think speech should be legal “only under certain circumstances.”
One-third of Democrats (34%) think Americans have “too much freedom,” and 75% think government has a responsibility to censor “hateful” social media posts. A majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media posts “under the rubric of protecting national security.”
If the poll is even half-accurate, these are terrifying results, and they give Biden censors the moral mandate to do it again in 2024.
White House attack dog
Proof comes in the form of Rob Flaherty, exposed in Missouri v. Biden as the Biden White House’s biggest bully. Federal Judge Terry Doughty singled out the White House director of digital strategy as a serial First Amendment transgressor.
He was a “key player in the Biden White House’s censorship enterprise,” according to Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who, as Missouri attorney general, launched the free-speech lawsuit which is now headed to the Supreme Court.
Schmitt compiled a list of Censor Boy’s greatest hits on a recent Twitter thread, which included Flaherty accusing Facebook of “political violence” for failing to censor speech to his liking.
“Are you guys f–king serious?” he wrote in one email to Meta executives. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
Flaherty even demanded that private conversations between WhatsApp users about the COVID vaccine be censored.
The White House should have fired Flaherty and pretended he had gone rogue.
Instead, Joe Biden hired him for his 2024 campaign and praised him as someone who “operated with unparalleled creativity, innovative spirit and a bias toward action.”
Shameless. But who’s going to stop them?