Google appeared to test its ability to blacklist conservative media on Tuesday from its monopolized search engine that gets at least 3.5 billion online searches every day, accounting for 94 percent of the percentage of Internet searches. .
Targeted websites, according to NewsBusters, which itself was temporarily displaced, included the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, Media Research Center and CNSNews among others.
Chuck Ross, a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation discovered that his medium was also included in Google’s blackout on Tuesday when he was looking for stories related to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign during Hurricane Crossfire and was unmasked by Ross on the call.
An experiment on whether Google is blocking search results from conservative sites. Randomly chosen Stefan Halper as a search term. NYT and WaPo have 96 combined returns. There are no results on @DailyCaller, although we have probably posted his name 100 times. pic.twitter.com/5xUZaiZQeH
– Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 21, 2020
According to NewsBusters, the websites affected by Google’s apparent suspension test were still organically available on Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.
The latest censorship episode comes just weeks after the California tech giant threatened to demonetize The Federalist following NBC’s collusion with a group of foreign left-wing experts who filed a complaint over conservative website reports about the media malpractice in its coverage of recent violence in the city center. RiotsWhile NBC News first celebrated Google’s decision to remove a competitor’s platform, the search company clarified that the website had not been banned, and instead simply threatened to demonetize The Federalist for content on the comment sections. Meanwhile, Google-owned YouTube is still known for hosting the most gruesome comment sections on the entire Internet.
In a statement to The Federalist, Google stated that it was a simple technical error, not a deliberate attempt to censor certain content or sites. It is not possible to independently confirm whether Google’s explanation is accurate.
“Today we noticed a problem that impacted some navigation and site queries: operator. We investigated and have since fixed the issue, “said a Google spokesperson.” This affected multiple sites representing a variety of different content and views. This issue was a technical error unrelated to the content or ideology of the affected sites. “
Read a full recap of Google’s attempts to remove the Federalist platform here.
