The psychologist behind a study that he says proves a definitive pro-Democrat bias in Google’s search results for two consecutive elections is set to expand operations and monitor Google’s search results in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.
Dr. Robert Epstein operated a study of search results for the last two election cycles, utilizing a secret Nielsen-style network of “field agents” to determine whether or not Google’s results were inherently biased. His findings show that millions of votes could have been swayed by biased search results stemming from the search engine manipulation effect.
“What [the studies] told us in each case is that we were getting highly-biased search results, biased in a liberal direction, on the Google search engine, but not Bing or Yahoo,” Epstein said. “So the fact that it’s appearing only on Google and we’re using neutral search terms, and we have this diverse group of American voters as our data channels — when you put that all together, that’s very concerning and very persuasive.”
Epstein says his method of “looking over the shoulders of real voters” is set to expand for 2020, ballooning to over 1,000 field agents from all 50 states, up from just 95 in 2016. His team is also setting its sights on more than search results, suggestions, and answer boxes.
“In 2020, we would be collecting data not just from search results, but from many different possible sources of manipulation, such as news feeds on Facebook and elsewhere,” Epstein said. “We’d be looking at shadow banning, which has never been properly quantified before. We’d be looking at email suppression. So, scaling up, having a larger system is one aspect. A second is looking at more sources of bias. A third, something also that has never been done before, is using artificial intelligence to allow us to analyze bias in real time. What we hope to be able to do is announce our findings on a daily basis.”
When asked if he was worried about Google trying to course-correct results to undermine his research, Epstein said that was his goal: to remove bias from search results and prevent voters from being manipulated.
“That’s the whole point — to get these companies to back off so that we have a free and fair election,” Epstein said. “If we don’t get them to back off, our democracy is an illusion because they can shift so many votes using these techniques.”
Republicans hailed Epstein’s research as proof that Google was trying to fix elections in Democrats’ favor, drawing the attention of even President Trump in August.
“Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought!” Trump tweeted.
The tweet shined a spotlight on Epstein’s work, and with it came harsh criticisms by Democrats and their allies. Clinton, who Epstein says he supported in the 2016 election, called his study “debunked” on Twitter. At the time, Epstein said Clinton should be “ashamed of herself” for telling “blatant lies” about him and his work. He then proceeded to break down how involved current and former members of Google were in her 2016 campaign. For instance, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was the campaign’s biggest donor.
Slate called his study “bogus,” and Politico called it a “voter conspiracy theory.” But Epstein says that attempts to criticize his work just don’t go the distance when it comes to methodology. Like Nielsen for its TV ratings, Epstein has developed a secret network of field agents, real American voters, and has taken great care to cultivate an environment to cut out as much error as possible and preserve as much usable data as possible, including using neutral search terms developed by Robert Schlesinger, formerly of U.S. News and World Report.
Epstein isn’t interested in seeing what results come up when using biased search terms. His goal is to see if real voters are being manipulated through biased results stemming from neutral search terms. Epstein even testified about his findings before Congress, saying: “No private company should have either the right or the power to manipulate large populations without their knowledge.” Epstein has been adamant that he is not accusing Google of maliciously influencing search results to drive voters in select ways.
