Williams: A message from Robert Epstein

Until a few days ago, the only ‘Epstein’ in the news that I knew about was Jeffrey Epstein. His sordid story, amid sex trafficking allegations, ended abruptly on Aug. 11 with reports of his suicide.

But there’s another Epstein making news and his story is, in some ways, even more offensive to our collective sense of right and wrong. This Epstein is Harvard-trained Dr. Robert Epstein, an American psychologist, professor and author, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego and the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Massachusetts.

Since 2015, Dr. Epstein has been warning that Google is a threat to our democratic system of government through its systematic censorship of search engine results that suppress conservative messaging.

Before some conclude that Dr. Epstein is a right-wing alarmist, be aware that he describes himself as ‘liberal’ and a very strong Hillary Clinton supporter up to and including the presidential election in 2016. He’s speaking out because in his words, “I value my country and my democracy more than I value any party or candidate.” In recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he claimed that liberal tech giants such as Google have manipulated and will probably continue to manipulate elections in favor of Democrats.

He stated that in the 2016 elections, Google influence resulted in, at a minimum, an additional 2.6 million votes for Clinton in the recent presidential election. He goes on to say that if Google, Twitter and Facebook all support the same candidate, the tech giants could influence as many as 15 million votes for the Democrat nominee in the 2020 elections.

Dr. Epstein’s research reveals that Google actively seeks to shape public opinion by placing articles favorable to Democratic candidates (and negative to conservative points of view) at the top of search results. His research has demonstrated how significant volumes of votes can be swayed by slanting the content of information disseminated through the 3.6 million searches made through Google’s search engine every minute. Dr. Epstein warns us that “Like most machine-learning algorithms, Google not only analyzes our behavior, it shapes it.”

With this disturbing information in hand, it would seem that claims of a 2016 Hillary popular vote victory were considerably less than legitimate.

Reports now reveal that at least 57 people were simultaneously affiliated with the Clinton 2016 campaign, in her State Department and in her foundations — and with Google or Google-related entities. Six high-level Google executives donated a total of $1.3 million to the 2016 Clinton campaign.

Dennis Prager, a nationally-syndicated talk show host, also has testified before Congress regarding Google’s practice of restricting 56 of his five-minute Prager University videos from full public access. One restricted video, for example, discussed the importance of the Ten Commandments. Other targeted video topics are: Are the Police Racist? Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women? Why Did America Fight the Korean War?

This is the same Google that refuses to work with our own military to develop more effective cybersecurity measures to protect the flow of information in the U.S. while it coordinates with the Chinese government to launch a censored version of its search engine in China.

It’s time that Congress takes a critical look at tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. These companies currently enjoy an exemption from libel laws since they are considered to be platforms that provide open channels of communication. Since they clearly now engage in censorship of political discourse, they must be reclassified as publishers who should be more appropriately regulated.

To comment on this column, email wilaugust46@gmail.com.