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Ritesh Lakhkar, a technical program manager at Google, in an undercover video released by Project VeritasProject Veritas / YouTube

October 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A manager at Google affirmed that searches are “skewed by the owners and the drivers of the algorithm” to “play God” in favoring the election prospects of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and harming those of President Donald Trump.

With growing alarms about the enormous ability of “Big Tech” companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to censor and even suppress political speech significantly impacting elections, Project Veritas, a non-profit undercover reporting enterprise, has released two new videos of conversations with Google managers verifying how such suppression is actually implemented.

The first “sting” video featured Ritesh Lakhkar, a technical program manager at Google, as well as Patrick Markan, lead mechanical engineer at Fitbit, a consumer electronics and fitness company currently being bought by Google.

Journalist: “You go to search and you type in ‘Donald Trump,’ and it’s like all negative —”

Ritesh Lakhkar: “Yeah.”

Journalist: “— and when you type in ‘Joe Biden,’ it’s all positive.”

Lakhkar: “Because —”

Patrick Markan: “It’s skewed by the owners or the drivers of the algorithm, right?”

Lakhkar: “It’s skewed by the owners and the drivers of the algorithm …

Describing this process in another place, Lakhkar stated, “So … you’re like playing selective God … if it was fraud, it doesn’t matter, but for Trump, Melania Trump, it matters, and on the other side, Trump says something, misinformation, you’re gonna delete that because it’s illegal under whatever pretext.”

“If a Democratic leader says that, then you’re gonna leave it like that, so I’m like … You are just plain and simple trying to play God,” he added.

With regards to YouTube, a company owned by Google (Alphabet), Lakhkar affirmed, “We play God with that too … But if it’s freedom of speech, both sides need to get their opinion.”

In a curious exchange, Lakhkar expressed his moral reservations regarding outsourcing American jobs at Google to China. He complained about being “surveilled” by the Chinese during his transpacific travel.

“I can’t keep doing this,” he said. “Go and teach Chinese people how to do American jobs and come back and get surveilled on the way.” When the Project Veritas journalist expressed his hope that surveillance similar to China’s doesn’t happen in the U.S., Lakhkar agreed, and affirmed that collaboration in such an endeavor “with China could happen and no one would know about it.”

Acknowledging Google as the most “powerful company in the world,” Lakhkar affirmed he would still like to leave the California-based company because, as he stated, “morally and ethically, I disagree [with censorship]” which, he states, is “one of the reasons I feel suffocated at Google.”

While confirming the facts of the first video, stating Google could “censor out news” from their search engine in order to suppress conservatives, the second video provides evidence for an additional means by which the tech giant may interfere in the election process, this time through their advertising sales apparatus.

Using a hidden camera, the Project Veritas reporter visited with Google advertising manager Adriano Amaduzzi, who explained that the organization “can offer free credits, free advertising credits, to Democratic parties for advertising,” and actually stop “right-wing parties from advertising.” And if it is not possible to deny such advertising, they can still pursue their objectives by “reducing the exposure of their ads.”

Finally, though identifying himself as a mere “pawn” with very little influence, Amaduzzi also bragged about how he declined selling advertising to a representative of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom who had contacted him, since that group supports Brexit.

Laughing, he explained, “You’re telling an Italian that lives in London that you want to advertise Brexit. It’s like, seriously? … I didn’t help him.”

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