Part 2 of 2
ELECTION INTERFERENCE
On Aug. 6, Trump
implicitly suggested that Google had favored Clinton’s 2016 campaign over his and that the company planned to “illegally subvert” the 2020 election as well. On Monday he
made the first part explicit , referencing an unspecified study that, he claimed, showed that “Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election.”
Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College majority but lost the popular tally to Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. Trump has falsely insisted for years that he actually won the popular vote.
The president’s
campaign Twitter feed suggested Monday that Trump referenced a
2017 study by psychologist Robert Epstein that found Google showed more pro-Clinton results to undecided voters than pro-Trump results. Google and others have
questioned the methodology of the study, which was not peer reviewed by other researchers.
In its final paragraph, the four-page study extrapolated experimental findings from a small group of 21 undecided voters to the electorate as a whole using mathematical models Epstein reported in an earlier paper. Reached by phone, Epstein said his results only showed that search results were biased toward Clinton, not that Google was doing so intentionally to sway elections.
Epstein also noted that those extrapolated findings suggested a pro-Clinton vote shift of 2.6 million to 10 million votes, not the 16 million cited by Trump.
Even that may be too much of a stretch, said Ramesh Srinivasan, an information-studies professor at UCLA, who noted that the study’s finding of alleged search-result bias doesn’t account for other possible influences on voters. “We can’t jump to conclusions that it gave any a candidate millions of votes,” he said.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump has been on a tear about Google that traces back to a series of unfounded claims about the technology giant circulating among conservatives. Among those claims: that Google interferes with U.S.
apnews.com
* Again, no proof of “shenanigans” on Google’s part.
Another perspective, challenging Conservatives notion that censoring is specifically biased against them;
“According to the platforms' recent transparency reports, from April to June 2020, nearly 95% of comments flagged as hate speech
on Facebook were detected by AI; and
on YouTube 99.2% of comments removed for violating Community Standards were flagged by AI.
"That means you're putting these community standards in place and you have these bots who are just looking for certain specific things. It's automated. It doesn't have the ability for nuanced decision-making in regards to this," said Wysinger.
Biases can be built into the algorithms by the programmers who designed them, even if it's unintentional.
"Unfortunately tech is made up of a
homogenous group, mostly White and Asian males, and so what happens is the opinions, the experiences that go into this decision-making are reflective of a majority group. And so people from different backgrounds — Black, Latino, different religions, conservative, liberal — don't have the accurate representation that they would if these companies were more diverse," said Mark Luckie, a digital strategist who previously worked at Twitter, Reddit and Facebook.“
Conservatives have been vocal about "censorship" complaints, but those on the opposite end of the political spectrum say their online speech is often quashed for reasons that have gotten far less attention.
www.cbsnews.com
There have been numerous studies investigating for intentional bias in social media, and none conducted by reputable groups has proven that Conservatives are unfairly censored.
If you have
actual, verifiable proof to the contrary, please post (with links).
www.cbsnews.com
www.newsbusters.org
