Is Google Honest?

It's pretty straightforward, I think. It gives me better results for the things that I search for than Google.

 

Have you signed up for Bing Rewards?

 

If you go to the Bing site, in the upper right there is a place to sign in using your Microsoft account or to create a Microsoft account if you don't have one. Once signed in, I think you're automatically signed up for Bing rewards. You might have to sign up for it, but it would be in that area. Besides earning points (for gift cards) for searches, they have daily quizzes, points you get just for clicking on things, and other ways to gather points.

 

Robert Epstein, a psychologist who has spent years researching the influence of Google, employing a network of volunteers who shared data from Google searches.

Based on his research, he estimated that Google may have manipulated the thinking of 2.5 million people in the 2016 election and that this amount is likely to be increased to more than 4 million in the 2020 election.

Testifying in front of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on July 16, he said, "The methods that they're using are invisible. They're subliminal. They're more powerful than most any effects I've ever seen in behavioral sciences and I've been in behavioral sciences for almost forty years."

What he views as a core issue is that "people blindly trust high-ranking search results over lower ones, and they are far more likely to view high-ranking results."

"In 2016, Google's search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom I supported," he testified. "I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election-related searches prior to election day, and Google's search results were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton."

For the 2018 midterm election, Epstein expanded his monitoring system, and concluded that, in the weeks leading up to election day, "bias in Google search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes, spread across many races, to the candidates of one political party, the Democrat Party."

Epstein warned that tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, were "overconfident" in 2016, but "in 2020, you can bet all of these companies are going to go all out."

"If these companies all support the same candidate, they will have the power to shift 15 million votes to that candidate," he said.

"At the moment, it's entirely up to Google to determine which bubble you're in, which search suggestions you receive, and which search results appear at the top of the list; that's the stuff of worldwide mind control," he said.

His suggestion for a remedy included forcing Google to open up its index to competing companies, citing the 1956 consent decree that forced AT&T to share its patents.

"There's precedent both in law and Google's business practices to justify taking this step," he stated.

"Democracy, as originally conceived, cannot survive big tech as currently empowered," he concluded.

Google spokespeople, of course, claim that the search engine giant is unbiased. However, Project Veritas published a video on June 24, in which Google employees, at several levels of the company, indicated the contrary, some of whom were proud of Google's ability to tweak its algorithm to push its users toward its preferred worldview.

In this video, as well as an internal email between Google employees, conservative voices were referred to as Nazis, although two of the three named in the email were Jewish.

Moreover, both Google and Facebook have publicly endorsed a model of content policing that reflects left-wing leanings, which has resulted in the banning of mainstream conservative ideals as hate speech. Everyone is opposed to hate speech, but the bias is in the fact that Google and Facebook get to define it according to their own worldview.

 

My mistake. Million. I've made the correction. Thanks. I had used million in the other numbers cited.

 

I don't doubt there is a bias, but it doesn't show up as much in their search engine results as it does in Google's. When Microsoft first began to become a huge corporation, as a company, they stayed out of politics, although I'm sure they contributed to some causes I would have disagreed with. Bill Gates took some pride in taking a neutral stance, probably because he wanted the company to focus on technology rather than politics. Then, in the early 1990s. the US government threatened them with anti-trust charges, which were filed in 1998. A judgment against the company was overturned on appeal and, since then, Microsoft has been buying off the politicians like big companies are supposed to.

Facebook contributions to Republicans: 7.0%
Facebook contributions to Democrats: 91.3%

Microsoft contributions to Republicans: 18.6%
Microsoft contributions to Democrats: 80.2%

-- Business Insider

Despite the fact that Democrats somehow manage to position themselves as fighting for the little guy against large corporations, apparently, the only ones they fight against are those that don’t contribute to them because Democrats receive a much larger amount of the contributions made by these Fortune 500 companies than Republicans do.

Google isn’t listed here but I read the finance reports from Google’s PAC a while back and, while they were contributing to more Republicans than I would have thought, the bulk of their money went to Democrats and the Republicans they supported were the neoconservatives who often vote with the Democrats.