For
weeks we have been seeing a number of stories regarding the California
primaries,slated
for June 5th,
where voters will choose who their general election candidates will
be. The headlines all have focused on how the Democratic party is "worried,"
or how California Dems "agonize,"
over House primaries, each article using a different term, but all
agreeing that Democrats are scared because of the "top-two primary system"
used in California.
BallotPediaexplains
the top-two primary system as "a type of primary election in which all
candidates are listed on the same primary ballot. The top two
vote-getters, regardless of their partisan affiliations, advance to the
general election. Consequently, it is possible for two candidates
belonging to the same political party to win in a top-two primary and face
off in the general election." It is often referred to as a "jungle
primary."
Democrats
are desperate to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in
November, and California is crucial to that effort, but because of the
top-two primary system, and an extremely crowded field for Democrats in
attempting to flip Republican held seats, they are panicking because their
candidates could divide the Democratic vote, leaving two Republicans to
face off in November if they receive the two highest totals of votes on
June 5, 2018.
Just
a look at the stories from the last week on any search engine regarding
this issue, shows how concerned the Democratic party is, and remember, we
have been seeing this issue in headlines for weeks.
BIG
TECH RIDES TO THE RESCUE FOR DEMOCRATS
Once
again proving that while Democrats and liberals scream bloody murder over
supposed "Russia" meddling and interfering in U.S. elections, the real
culprits are our very own big tech companies, like Google, who has been
busted by thewebsite
VICEas
labeling the California Republican Party's ideology as "nazism," in their
knowledge panel.
After
being contacted by VICE, the "ideology" section from their knowledge
panel had been removed. In a statement given to VICE, Google
representatives claimed "vandalism" was responsible, as public source
information sites such as Wikipedia, to which Google heavily relies upon
for their "knowledge panels," allow third party users to change
information.
Google's
"knowledge panels" are automatically populated from a variety of
sources, including Wikipedia. "Sometimes people vandalize public
information sources, like Wikipedia, which can impact the information
that appears in search," a Google spokesperson said, in a statement. "We
have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search
results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened
here."
The spokesperson stressed that the "Nazism" listing was not due to any
manual change by any Google employee and that the company does not
manipulate search results to favor any political ideology over another.
A
look atWikipedia's
revision history pagefor
their California Republican Party page, shows 12 revisions made under
the May 31, 2018 date with one listed as removing false information added
by revision, and others listed as "undid revision." One of those corrected
the Nazism misrepresentation which was apparently added last week,according
to the Quartz website,
meaning that Google has been telling voters, and anyone else looking
for information on the California Republican Party, that they were Nazis,
for possibly a week.
As
the largest search engine on the internet, Google's irresponsibility in
using a system they acknowledge is ripe for vandalism, which in turn
misleads Google users on their own platform, is reprehensible.
AsWIRED
points out,
it is not only Google that uses Wikipedia which has often been shown to
have a considerable liberal lean, but this is becoming a industry wide
issue:
Even
knowing these risks, the tech industry writ large has leaned on
platforms like Wikipedia to solve the problems of filtering out so much
human-generated garbage. Earlier this year, Google's sibling company
YouTube announced that the company will begin publishing so-called
"information cues" alongside conspiracy theory videos. Those cues will
include content directly from Wikipedia that, ideally, debunks the
conspiracy theory. Facebook, meanwhile, is testing a button that allow
users reading an article to get additional context about the topic, some
of it lifted from Wikipedia as well.
Reaction
from Republicans has come out fast and furiously, as topRepublican
blasts Google,
with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) sending afurious
tweet to Google,
stating "Dear @Google, This is a disgrace #StopTheBias," along with a
screen shot of what they have been showing search users.McCarthy
continued on to say"Sadly,
this is just the latest incident in a disturbing trend to slander
conservatives. These damaging actions must be held to account.
#StopTheBias."
RNC
Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel's, who has recently been on the offensive
regarding social media and big tech's censorship of conservatives,states"Google
owes conservatives answers and assurances that they are putting an end to
this. Evidence is mounting that conservative voices are either being
suppressed or, as it appears in this case, being falsely depicted as
hateful extremists."
VICE
quotes Cynthia Bryant, executive director of the California
Republican Party: "It is libelous and Wikipedia and Google should take
more ownership of what is published on their sites, since both companies
just said 5 million Californians support Nazism."
BOTTOM
LINE
There
is no doubt that someone gamed the system, but just days before a primary
which has been in the news for weeks with stories showing how "concerned,
worried, panicked, and agonized" Democrats are over the top-two primary
system possibly costing them their chance to flip control of the U.S.
House of Representatives, having "Nazism" listed for any amount of time as
the ideology of California Republicans, is in and of itself, meddling in a
U.S. election and an abuse of power.
The
fact that Google chooses to use Wikipedia, put the onus is on Google for
such election meddling.