Steve Balich Editors Note: It seems Big Tech is making use of behavioral science sending select information to people on internet apps. Has this become a platform that supports issues, policy, political candidates, and parties using methods of repetition and selective removal of opinion.

This is shocking how much influence Big Tech have!

#twill #tcot #maga #leadright #sbalich #bigtech #censorship #facebook #twitter #youtube #google @realdonaldtrump

Not just conservatives: Google and Big Tech can shift millions of votes in any direction

Donald Trump is more right than he knows. My research suggests Google and Big Tech can manipulate voters in ways that threaten democracy and autonomy.

Robert Epstein Opinion contributor

I am not a Trump supporter. I’m not even a conservative. But I love America and democracy, and I defend truth when I see it, and President Donald Trump is not only justified in expressing misgivings about Google and other tech companies — he seems to have no idea just how big a threat Google-and-the-Gang pose to both democracy and human autonomy.

In an article in The Epoch Times, I have detailed 10 different methods Big Tech companies can use to shift millions of votes in the midterm elections with no one knowing they’re doing so and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace — upwards of 12 million votes, by my calculations. These powerful new means of manipulation make fake news stories and targeted ads, sources of influence that are both competitive and visible, look like kid stuff.

I’ve been a research scientist for nearly 40 years, and for more than five years now, I’ve been discovering, studying and quantifying new methods of influence that the internet has made possible. Two of these methods — the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME, pronounced “seem”) and the Search Suggestion Effect (SSE) — are among the most powerful types of influence ever discovered in the behavioral sciences.

Google search results affect elections

My randomized, controlled and peer-reviewed research on SEME shows that when one candidate is favored in search results, that can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more — up to 80 percent in some demographic groups. My new research on SSE suggests that (a) Google is manipulating opinions from the very first character people type into the Google search bar, and (b) by manipulating search suggestions (those phrases they flash at you while you’re typing your search term), Google can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into an astonishing 90/10 split.

Those boxes they often show you at the top of the results page, the so-called “featured snippets,” also shift votes and opinions, possibly boosting the impact of SEME by between 10 and 30 percent.

Is there evidence of actual favoritism in Google’s search engine? Well, the European Union certainly thinks so, having fined Google $2.7 billion last year for having biased search results. In the months leading up to the 2016 election here in the U.S., I led a team that used objective methods to preserve 13,207 online election-related searches and the 98,044 web pages to which the search results linked. These data showed that Google’s search results favored Hillary Clinton (whom I supported) in all 10 positions on the first page of search results — enough, perhaps, to have shifted two or three million votes in her direction over time.