Big Tech anti-conservative bias raises alarm about 2020 election meddling - Conservative frustration with Big Tech bias bubbled over this week amid fresh evidence of behind-the-scenes political manipulation at Google, spurring calls for federal action to prevent the industry from putting its thumb on the scales of the 2020 election.
President Trump led the charge Wednesday by accusing left-leaning tech platforms of “trying to rig the election,” citing a hidden-camera video released this week by Project Veritas showing a Google executive discussing the need to prevent “the next Trump situation.”
“I tell you what, they should be sued, because what’s happening with the bias,” Mr. Trump told Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo. “And now you see it, with that executive yesterday from Google, the hatred for the Republicans, and it’s not even, ‘Gee, let’s lean Democrat.’ The hatred.”
Meanwhile, the White House announced it would host a Social Media Summit on July 11 for “digital leaders,” focusing on “opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.”
Top tech platforms Google and YouTube have responded by reiterating their denials of politically motivated chicanery, while conservatives who have raised alarm for years about online censorship and discrimination insist the time for talk is over.
The Media Research Center repeated its call Wednesday for a Justice Department investigation into bias at the social media giants, saying “they are simply too powerful for ordinary citizens to challenge.”
“It’s an ongoing problem, and some members of Congress recognize the problem, but nothing is getting done. And that’s the real problem,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the center. “We are now in the election cycle, and this latest report raises questions about whether or not this will be a fair election.”
The Project Veritas video showed Google executive Jen Gennai saying that everyone, including the voters and news media, “got screwed in 2016,” and that Google has been working on “what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again.”
Ms. Gennai admitted in a Monday post to using “imprecise language” but insisted the idea that she was a “powerful executive” confirming that Google was trying to fix the 2020 election was “absolute, unadulterated nonsense.”
Mr. Trump saw it differently. “Let me tell you, they’re trying to rig the election,” he said. “That’s what we should be looking at, not the witch hunt, the phony witch hunt.”