Investigative journalism organization, Project Veritas has released what they claim to be a leaked document from Google showing employees calling conservative and libertarian commentators “nazis.”
Veritas writes:
The email apparently was sent as part of the Google “transparency-and-ethics” group internal communications and suggests that content from PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro should be disabled from the “suggestion feature.”
The email states:
“Today it is often 1 or 2 steps to Nazis if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles you mention in step 1. I can receive these recommendations regardless of the content of what I’m looking at, and I have recorded thousands of internet users sharing the same experience.”
“I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestions feature? That could be significant in terms of user trust.”
The release of the leaked email comes on the heels of an undercover video from Project Veritas showing Google employee Jen Gennai discussing how the company could intervene in the 2020 elections to “prevent” the “next Trump situation.”
“We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again,” she says in the footage.
“We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” she says in the footage.
Gennai also warned against Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) plan to break up the tech company because “all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that.”
Gennai has responded to the video, writing in a post for Medium, “I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done.”
