I think this might represent a couple of billion dollars worth of excessive campaign contributions by Google.
[Summary]
“Google Is Labeling A Trump-Supporting Republican State Senator A ‘BIGOT'”, in VICE News, June 1, 2018.
Trudy Wade (https://www.trudywade.com/).
Trudy Wade is a Republican state senator from North Carolina and an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump. But if you search “Trudy Wade” on Google, the search giant displays an old photo in the “knowledge panel” of its search results with “BIGOT” superimposed in big red letters.
It’s just the latest example of Google not vetting the information that gets pulled into its “knowledge panels,” which are meant to give users quick information without them having to click through search results (often on other, non-Google websites).
Google’s “Bigot” picture has surfaced as Wade is in the midst of a tough re-election battle against marketing executive and Democrat Michael Garrett. The state’s district maps were redrawn for this election after several courts ruled that the state had been racially gerrymandered to benefit Republicans.
The newly redrawn state legislative districts have made Wade and the 27th district a top target for progressives in the state. The local Indivisible group “Flip NC” has deemed the 27th one of its top 10 “most flippable” Senate districts this year as Democrats attempt to break the Republican supermajority in the state legislature that allows Republicans to override the Democratic governor’s vetoes. Google is intervening in the election to defeat Wade.
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[Summary]
Google listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party. Vice News, May 31, 2018.
Less than a week before the California primary, Google listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party.
In the “knowledge panel” that provides easy access to information next to search results, Google was showing “Nazism” as an “ideology” of the party as of Thursday morning. The word “Nazism” was hyperlinked to a secondary page that shows “Nazism” alongside other “ideologies” of California Republicans like “Conservatism,” “Market liberalism,” “Fiscal conservatism,” and “Green conservatism.” >Voters looking for information by searching “California Republicans” or “California Republican Party” were getting “Nazism” next to their search results until Google took the listing down later Thursday after a query from VICE News.
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[Fulltext]
Press Release: Trudy Wade For North Carolina State Senate. June 2, 2018.
I’ve had several requests for comment about yesterday’s Google firestorm, so I thought it best to post my unfiltered response here, in its entirety.
First, I want to thank so many of you for the calls, texts, emails and tweets over the past 24 hours. I’m grateful for your kind words and support.
Although I appreciate Google’s belated apology, if I’m being completely honest it rang a bit hollow. When I learned of the hateful image yesterday, an aide requested Google take it down. She was told to find and contact the original author of the photo, and the post stayed up. Even when the Insider’s Colin Campbell broke the story in Raleigh, the image remained. Only after Drudge Report posted it to a national audience and it began to go viral on social media did Google do the right thing. This was disconcerting to me, especially given what happened 24 hours earlier, when a Google search >What should be even more concerning to all of us is that yesterday’s treatment of a conservative is nothing new. Not even close. In fact, if you were a subscriber to Greensboro’s local newspaper you’d probably agree yesterday’s character assassination was far from the worst thing ever printed about me or other North Carolina Republicans.
I believe one of the reasons this kind of vitriol has become so common and fashionable in our country is the staggering bias of the news media. The “mainstream“ press – where many of us once looked for truth and reliable reporting – have become cesspools of elitism and intolerance, and the troubling lack of ideological diversity in newsrooms across the country has sown seeds of hatred for years against conservatives – maybe especially against conservative women. It’s culminated in an unhinged assault on President Trump and anyone who dares support him publicly. I guess it’s not terribly surprising that the liberal groupthink has started to permeate America’s corporations, too.
What happened yesterday was shameful, but for me, and fellow conservatives, it was just another day at the office. Being an optimist at heart, I hope we’ll be better tomorrow because of this, but the realist in me knows it will take more than belated apologies.
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