Congress warned Google can sway vote to Dems

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Harvard-trained researcher Robert Epstein, who voted for Hillary Clinton, told a congressional panel that Google's search results favored the Democratic candidate in 2016 and can do the same in 2020.

Epstein testified to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution that biased search results can alter the opinion of millions.

A senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research, Epstein made it clear at the hearing Tuesday that he is "not a conservative."

"I am here today for three reasons: to explain why Google presents a serious threat to democracy and human autonomy, to explain how passive monitoring systems can protect us both now and in the future from companies like Google, and to tell you how Congress can immediately end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search," he said in his prepared testimony.

In an interview with WND last December, Epstein – who was famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner's last Ph.D. student at Harvard – said his peer-reviewed research over the past half decade shows that "not only does Google have the power to shift votes and opinions on a massive scale, they actually use that power."

During the 2016 election campaign, Epstein concluded that Google heavily biased results in favor of Clinton, possibly shifting as many as 3 million votes.

A video leaked in September showed Google executives at their first weekly meeting after Trump's election exhibiting panic and dismay while expressing their determination to thwart the new administration’s agenda as well as the emerging global populist movement.

Robert Epstein

In his testimony Tuesday, Epstein said the data he's collected since 2016 show Google "displays content to the American public that is biased in favor on one political party – a party I happen to like, but that’s irrelevant."

"No private company should have either the right or the power to manipulate large populations without their knowledge," he said.

Epstein explained that he knows the number of votes that shifted in 2016 because he has conducted "dozens of controlled experiments in the U.S. and other countries that measure precisely how opinions and votes shift."

"Bear in mind here," he told the senators, "that all Google search results are, in a sense, biased."

"There are no equal-time rules built into Google algorithm. It always puts one widget ahead of another – and one candidate ahead of another," he said.