The farcical Russian meddling pursuit by Democrats masks the real monkeying in our elections done by their buddies at Google and Facebook. But even by the admissions of Mueller and the FBI, Russia's minor meddling did not change a single vote in the 2016 presidential election.
On the other hand, analysis of Google's 2016 election algorithm searches by liberal Harvard researcher Dr. Robert Epstein concluded that they vastly favored Hillary over Trump. His work concluded that Google bias-steered 2.6 million more votes to her by emphasizing negative news about Trump and promoting positive news about Hillary.
Epstein's research further showed that, based on Google's one-sided search algorithms, 78 million votes in total were swayed to the Democrats in all elections nationwide. Now that is power, that is "meddling," yet it is also not surprising. Google has long silenced conservative voices to advance its liberal agenda.
The documentary "The Creepy Line" details Epstein's and others' work, and how these tech monopoly giants control us by what they allow us to see. The title is what Google CEO Eric Schmidt eerily said Google was willing to walk up to, "the creepy line," in pursuit of its goals. The creepy line is also what they call a meet and greet for Joe Biden.
Ron HartProject Veritas has done some fine investigative reporting confirming Google's systemic bias to help Democrats. It is not even debatable; big Silicon Valley tech is in the tank for leftist candidates. They shape unwitting Americans' opinions with their biased search results. If Democrats honestly cared about meddling in elections, they would do something about that.
Google has a 90% market share in search advertising, a virtual monopoly. You know where to hide the body of someone you killed? On the second page of a Bing or Yahoo search page. Google, Twitter, Facebook and now Amazon hold inordinate sway over what people see and read. They manipulate everything to fit their arrogant, left-coast-bubble view of the rest of us.
It's tough for us libertarians to say government should intervene here to make things fair. Government is never the answer, unless the question is, "How do we make things worse and more expensive?" Government bureaucracies exist to ensure that monopolies with big lobbying money for greasing politicians can get by with murder and no competition.
I feel public shaming and good reporting, not regulation, are the best fix to let consumers of Google and Facebook know they are being manipulated. The young are more vulnerable to manipulation than us older folks. Millennials going to Google for the truth is like them going to Anthony Weiner for a hug.
We should all be skeptical of what we see in media and online. We live in a world now where Twitter and Facebook have blurred the difference between the town crier and the town drunk.
I trust people know there is fake news on social media. I guess it's important that we see that someone is "feeling blessed" by his kid attending Yale, but what he does not say is that it's Yale Locksmith School.
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When tiny Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook put on his formal hoodie and sat on a cushion to testify on privacy before the Senate, his condescension was palpable. First, the 75-year-old senators had no idea how to even access their iTunes password and should not have been the ones questioning him. Second, by day two Zuckerberg was so confident he was not going to be punished that he intimidated some senators by mentioning their favorite pets, mothers' maiden names and where they met their spouses.
Technology moves fast; conservatives do not. They should fight their instincts to try to regulate or censor the internet. Perhaps the best solution is the free market and a Fox News-like business that takes on the bias of the left with a new Google. If Twitter and Google are censoring content to fit their liberal narrative, it would not be hard to fund a competitor whose market differential is honest. Maybe call it "Honest Search." Libertarian investor Peter Thiel or others could do this. I'd invest.
Contact Ron Hart at Ron@RonaldHart.com or Twitter @RonaldHart.