March 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Google justifies its aggressive and controversial efforts to suppress what content it claims to be “hate speech” and “fake news” as a direct response to President Donald Trump’s 2016 election, according to an email an employee of the internet giant published Monday on Twitter.
In a series of tweets, software engineer Mike Wacker shared redacted screenshots from what he says is an email he received from another employee in June 2017, Breitbart reported.
“I posted a comment on a meme regarding fake news on Search and someone reported it to (Human Resources). I didn’t say I was in favor or against, just cautioned that we need to be car(e)ful,” the unnamed email sender wrote. “My manager brought it up in our 1:1 last week. Made me feel very uncomfortable for having an opposing view. He said we need to stop hate (speech) and fake news because that’s how Trump won the election.”
“I obviously didn’t say anything and just wanted it to end,” the sender continued, adding that he “would like to see all managers be required to take political bias training.”
Another section of the email has harsh words for Google’s “bias busting” course. “The entire thing is bashing conservatives and Trump supporters,” the sender wrote. “So many false accusations and sob stories. My friend took the course and said he was told he didn’t know how it felt to be a minority because he was a male. This came from the speaker themselves!”
In a series of tweets, Wacker said the experience was “certainly not an isolated incident” and explained that he was only going public because his efforts to resolve the situation privately had been in vain:
On the topic of political bias at Google, I have decided to publish the following email I received from another Google employee in July of 2017. (For privacy reasons, parts have been redacted, including the employee's identity.) The contents of this email speak for itself. pic.twitter.com/X5nze8rsF4
— Mike Wacker (@m_wacker) March 11, 2019
In these situations, one should first make a reasonable attempt to resolve such matters internally. In both this case and other cases, I have made a good faith attempt to do that. However, those attempts did not resolve my concerns, which led me to my current course of action.
— Mike Wacker (@m_wacker) March 11, 2019
In particular, HR is not impartial, their actions provide clear and convincing evidence of favoritism, and they have abused their power and authority.
— Mike Wacker (@m_wacker) March 11, 2019
Finally, on the topic of viewpoint diversity, both political diversity and religious diversity matter. I have touched on the politics part, especially since Google CEO Sundar Pichai has claimed that Google is a non-partisan company, but the religion part is important, too.
— Mike Wacker (@m_wacker) March 11, 2019
“Bluntly, I do not trust Google's ability to properly prevent and handle these sorts of incidents,” Wacker continued, accusing the company’s leadership, management, and “especially” its HR department of being unreliable. HR in particular, he said, displayed “clear and convincing evidence of favoritism” in how it handles grievances.
The latest allegations fit a broader picture drawn by previous leaked conversations, which appear to show not only that Google’s dominant ideology is dramatically out of step with the country at large, but that the company is willing to enforce it via its ostensibly-neutral services.
A leaked video from Google’s first “TGIF” (Thank God It’s Friday) meeting after Trump’s victory reveals the company’s co-founders and other top officials discussing the election with anguish and vows to use their power to influence a “better quality of governance and decision-making,” to “make sure” the current period of so-called “populism, of nationalism” is no more than a “blip” or “hiccup” in a “moral arc of history bend(ing) towards progress.”
More recently, leaked documents revealed that enough employees objected to the mere use of the word “family” in a company presentation as supposedly “homophobic” that Google vice president Pavni Diwanji apologized for “caus(ing) concerns in the way we talked about families,” and asked for input to “get to a better state” and “teach us how to talk about it in inclusive way, if you feel like we are not doing it well.”
Previous Google scandals include analysis finding a heavy liberal tilt to news search results, estimates that Google may have swung as many as 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and partnership with the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center for flagging “hate.”
Conservative pundit Dennis Prager is currently suing Google for placing more than 80 of his Prager University YouTube videos in “restricted mode,” allegedly under false pretenses, and in January pro-life group Live Action saw one of its investigative videos deleted for alleged “sexually provocative content.” YouTube restored it after Live Action publicly objected to and privately appealed its deletion.