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How Google could rig the 2016 election
Politico Magazine ^ | August 19, 2015 | By ROBERT EPSTEIN

Posted on 08/19/2015 9:26:04 PM PDT by Swordmaker

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished.

Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.

Given that many elections are won by small margins, this gives Google the power, right now, to flip upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide. In the United States, half of our presidential elections have been won by margins under 7.6 percent, and the 2012 election was won by a margin of only 3.9 percent—well within Google’s control.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2016election; 2016issues; elections; google; internet; voter
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1 posted on 08/19/2015 9:26:04 PM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: Swordmaker

Don’t buy it.


2 posted on 08/19/2015 9:31:09 PM PDT by Impy (They pull a knife, you pull a gun. That's the CHICAGO WAY, and that's how you beat the rats!)
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To: Swordmaker

Paper Ballots, everyone. It’s high time to go retro and return to physical voting ballots. Hacking has influenced some top security agencies in Germany to retrain their agents on communicating by a typewriter. You heard me, a typewriter,the type you may have seen on the show Mad Men.


3 posted on 08/19/2015 9:34:00 PM PDT by lee martell (The sag)
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To: All
Having been the one who discovered that Google had cleansed all the thumbnails of the Obama Longfrom and shortform Birth Certificates back just after the White wash House had released the Long Form and replaced them with innocuous photos of people, places, and things, instead of photos of the Birth Certificates—the actual images were STILL on the links, but the Google image thumbnails no longer represented what they linked to—I would NOT put anything past the reprehensible people at Google.

I posted the sudden disappearance of all Obama Birth Certificate thumbnails on FreeRepublic and others then started noticing the difficulty in finding images to look at the BC. It took almost a week before public outcry resulted in Google replacing the thumbnails with correct images. They claimed it was a single employee who did it. Sure. . . right. . . Do a search for Obama Birth Certificate and get photos of groups of people, the White House, even Palm Trees? But no birth certificates??? Click on the thumbnails of any of them and it would still take you to a photo of the birth certificate website, or the photo itself, but the thumbnail was wrong.

4 posted on 08/19/2015 9:36:03 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: Swordmaker

They have politicususa appear as a legitimate news site when you do searches, so this isn’t a surprise.


5 posted on 08/19/2015 9:40:36 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: lee martell; Impy
Paper Ballots, everyone. It’s high time to go retro and return to physical voting ballots. Hacking has influenced some top security agencies in Germany to retrain their agents on communicating by a typewriter. You heard me, a typewriter,the type you may have seen on the show Mad Men.

This has nothing to do with ballots. This has everything to do with Google presenting only negative stories for candidates they DON'T like and positive stories for those they DO like when a person does a search for that candidate's name. It sways the potential voters opinion of the candidate. . . the people who did the study tried in with various people in artificial situations and then tried in REAL elections in India and got REAL results.

It sways the undecideds and the low-information voters who are looking for information on making their decisions. . . and it is QUITE effective. THEY think Google is impartial, but it isn't. You and I know this, but THE LOW INFORMATION VOTER DOES NOT! They think they are getting a fair representation of the stories about the candidates when it is being deliberately skewed.

It is the ultimate example of a one newspaper town controlling the news a voter base gets.

6 posted on 08/19/2015 9:41:44 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: Swordmaker

Use DuckDuckGo.

https://duckduckgo.com/


7 posted on 08/19/2015 9:43:08 PM PDT by Jim from C-Town (The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)
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To: Swordmaker

I buy that they’re doing it but not that it makes that much difference any more than tv news being skewed does. The media is the enemy, we know this. I doubt Romney would have won if Google linked to more positive stories about him.


8 posted on 08/19/2015 9:44:55 PM PDT by Impy (They pull a knife, you pull a gun. That's the CHICAGO WAY, and that's how you beat the rats!)
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To: Jim from C-Town
Use DuckDuckGo.

I do, Jim, but it isn't me that would be so easily swayed. . . it's the low information voter who has Google as their default search engine and thinks they are the best source to find out anything factual.

There is absolutely NO WAY we can change enough undecided voters to move to an unbiased search engine before the election to stop Google's evil ways from having this effect.

9 posted on 08/19/2015 9:46:20 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: Impy
I buy that they’re doing it but not that it makes that much difference any more than tv news being skewed does. The media is the enemy, we know this. I doubt Romney would have won if Google linked to more positive stories about him.

Read the article. . . the studies showed that it did have that much effect in elections.

10 posted on 08/19/2015 9:47:18 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: Swordmaker

Add Yahoo and AOL to the “reprehensible people at Google.”


11 posted on 08/19/2015 9:48:54 PM PDT by Steelfish
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To: Impy

Yeah, the horse-pucky quotient is off the charts with this one.


12 posted on 08/19/2015 9:49:43 PM PDT by sparklite2 (Voting is acting white.)
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To: Swordmaker

Search engines - and their algorithms - prey on the undecideds. It is our job as the elections approach to talk to everyone we can about our candidate and the dangers presented by theirs.

Enough is enough!!!


13 posted on 08/19/2015 9:55:27 PM PDT by datura
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To: Swordmaker

It’s pure coincidence that Obama meets frequently with the pointy heads at Google and facebook.


14 posted on 08/19/2015 9:57:23 PM PDT by Organic Panic
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To: Swordmaker

https://ixquick.com/


15 posted on 08/19/2015 10:00:21 PM PDT by matthew fuller (DemoNAZI Coronation postponed due to conflicting court schedule.)
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To: Swordmaker

I’m going to do a web search on that.


16 posted on 08/19/2015 10:06:33 PM PDT by TBP (Obama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: Swordmaker

Thanks very much for posting this article.

Admittedly, I am a computer dunce, but even I notice Google’s bias; most notably when searching for ugly or unflattering photos of demonic-rats to use on our FReepathon threads.

Of course, whenever I search for articles, I’ve also noted Google’s bias against conservative politicians. Sure enough, the stories spiked at the top are almost always negative, despite the date and time the said articles were originally posted.


17 posted on 08/19/2015 10:09:23 PM PDT by onyx (PLEASE Support FR - GO MONTHLY - Join CLUB 300 - God bless FR's Donors!)
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To: Swordmaker
I believe it to a point, but only in the case of very low information voters.

I believe that most Americans are damn sick and tired of what Zero's been doing to the country over the last seven years, and that they're ready for a radical change from the 'business as usual' politics of Washington.

Note that the top tier Republican candidates are all political outsiders. Even on the Dem side, a 73 year old wackadoodle socialist is about to eclipse Mrs. Inevitable Establishment Politician.

Yeah, Google is really helping the Uniparty candidates.....not.

The country is on fire. Google is only going to be able to influence a small portion of the people to move toward an establishment candidate.

18 posted on 08/19/2015 10:18:34 PM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Swordmaker

Great catch.

I suspect they were part of scrubbing the scene of the Illinois senate race between Obama and alan Keyes from the Internet where Keyes says Obama wasn’t even born in this country, and Obama says we are talking about the senate, not the presidency. I SAW THAT CLIP HERE ON FR but it is gone from the Internet. Even Keyes says it never happened but I saw it with my own eyes and they were both sitting down and there was no smoking gun. Obama could easily lie that bit away. But yet it is GONE.


19 posted on 08/19/2015 10:26:34 PM PDT by Yaelle (The election isn't the main thing. Stopping the 2 party oligarchy and their media IS.)
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To: Jim from C-Town

I use DuckDuckGo exclusively. I recommend it to all...

https://duckduckgo.com/


20 posted on 08/19/2015 10:48:30 PM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea (I am a Tea Party descendant...steeped in the Constitutional Republic given to us by the Founders)
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