‘1984 is not a user manual’ says Google whistleblower

Project Veritas, a Conservative investigative site founded by political activist James O’Keefe, has published a widely circulated video showing Google’s head of responsible innovation discussing the intentional altering of algorithms in order to alter political outcomes.

A Google insider has warned against the misuse of information.  

“1984 should be a warning. 1984 should not be user manual on how to run society” – Google insider

Members of Veritas met with executive Jen Gennai and secretly filmed her alluding to a political bias by Google against Conservative voices. 

Gennai states in the undercover video: “We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would the outcome be different?”

This video comes soon after an alleged whistleblower came forward with documentation that details an algorithm, known as FM Fairness, designed to target predominately Conservative voices in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. 

Gennai states in the video: “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 has responded to the video and the claims of political bias, stating: “These people lied about their true identities, filmed me without my consent, selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer.”

The original video showing the meeting was quickly removed by YouTube and Google following its upload, although other news outlets and online users have widely circulated the video. 

The meeting came soon after Democrat Congresswoman Elizabeth Warran made calls for the breaking up of Google. 

Remarking on the situation during the meeting,  Gennai said: “Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google. That will make it worse because now all those smaller companies who don’t have the same resources we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation. A small company cannot do that.”

“My definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalised communities. And that’s what I care about. Communities who are in power and have traditionally been in power are not who I am solving fairness for” – Google executive Jen Gennai 

A Google whistleblower has stated: “What they are really saying about fairness is that they have to manipulate their search results so that it gives them the political agenda they want, and so they will have to re-bias their algorithm.

“(MF Fairness) takes as input the clicks that people are making, and then signals are being generated by these clicks. It decides which signals it wants to amplify and which it wants to gambit.

“(Search suggestions) are coming from truth databases that they have selectively chosen which will represent the truth. These examples are part of the social justice narrative, which MF is choosing to amplify.”

Following the scandal, US Texas representative Dan Crenshaw questioned Google’s representatives during a Home Security Committee hearing. 

Crenshaw criticised Google’s alleged political bias and its decision to label certain political individuals as ‘Nazis’, seen in a leaked email from the company. The individuals included  commentator Ben Shapiro, clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, and online platform Prageru University. 

“Labelling mainstream Conservatives as Nazis is a premise from which you operate, it’s not even a question. It says ‘given that Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prageru are Nazis’ as a premise what do we do about that?

“Two out of three of them are Jewish, yet you think they are Nazis. It begs the question what kind of education do the people at Google have?” – Senate representative Dan Crenshaw