An anti-corruption watchdog group has filed a shareholder proposal with YouTube’s parent company requiring it to publish content removal requests by the Biden administration. The National Legal and Policy Center proposal would require Google to post the takedown requests they receive from the federal government. In July, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said her administration colleagues were in regular touch with social media companies, both to help boost stories they favor and kill the ones they wish weren’t told. The proposal is like a referendum for record owners of stock in Alphabet, the publicly traded umbrella company that controls Google and YouTube, amongst many others.
NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty said:
“The case for this kind of disclosure is double-barreled. All citizens should be aware when the government engages in censorship, even if it is through a private-sector company, and shareholders of that company should know when they become a party to it.”
Liberty Nation reported on Psaki’s revelation from July, when she “explained that not only are members of the team in regular contact, but they’re even flagging ‘problematic posts’ for Facebook.” She said, “We are regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing across all of social and traditional media.” Two new and notable cases of Google / YouTube putting their fingers on the scales to favor leftist narratives sprang up recently.
Down the Memory Hole
Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog was de-monetized by Google for “Unreliable and harmful claims.” His work is featured by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in support of their conclusions on climate change. What was the scientist’s crime requiring demonetization? LN’s Caroline Adana reports: “He just doesn’t believe in the most outlandish catastrophic warming scenarios pushed by doomsters.”
Robert Malone is a medical doctor, a virologist, and an immunologist. A vaccine mandate skeptic, he may have been the first scientist to create an mRNA vaccine. Dr. Malone appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast and spoke about Mass Formation Psychosis and panic over Covid-19. He said: “When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety, their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis — they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere.”
With exposure from Rogan’s podcast, interest in the phenomenon drove Google to scuttle its own search results. Instead of displaying the results the algorithm came to, the company posted an announcement that it was manually changing results by “reliable sources.” They used the time to make the entire first page of search results link only to pages critical of Dr. Malone. Search engine DuckDuckGo, which does not game results for the Biden administration specifically, or progressive politics generally, shows results that are both critical and laudatory of Malone’s statements.
Mutual Fund Managers Needed
The big social media companies all seem to be both leftist progressive in their leanings and combine that with a willingness to repress the voices of conservatives. If enough shareholders can be convinced to vote for this measure, we could learn how the Biden administration advances or restricts the “latest narratives” Psaki mentions. Only record owners of the stock in Alphabet will have a say, meaning mostly mutual fund managers and owners. The company has yet to announce the date of its 2022 shareholder meeting, when votes will be counted.
If passed, Alphabet will have to report “the Company’s policy in responding to requests to remove or take down material from its platforms by the Executive Office of the President, Centers for Disease Control, or any other agency or entity of the United States Government” and publish “an itemized listing of such takedown requests, including the name and title of the official making the request, the nature and scope of the request, the date of the request, the outcome of the request, and a reason or rationale for the Company’s response, or lack thereof.”
Founded in the wake of the Keating Five scandal, the National Legal and Policy Center promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education, and legal action. The group advocates for all actors to follow the Code of Ethics for Government, written by Sen. Paul Douglas (D-IL), and passed by resolution in Congress in 1958.
~ Read more from Scott D. Cosenza.
