gangstonc
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In 2012, Epstein publicly disputed with Google Search over a security warning placed on links to his website.[10] His website, which features mental health screening tests, was blocked for serving malware that could infect visitors to the site. Epstein emailed "Larry Page, Google's chief executive; David Drummond, Google's legal counsel; Epstein's congressman; and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, and Newsweek."[10] In it, Epstein threatened legal action if the warning concerning his website was not removed, and denied that any problems with his website existed.[10] Several weeks later, Epstein admitted his website had been hacked, but criticized Google for tarnishing his name and not helping him find the infection.[11]
After this incident, Epstein offered other criticism of Google's practices. In 2013, he wrote in Time magazine that Google had "a fundamentally deceptive business model".[12][13] In 2015, he said that Google could rig the 2016 US presidential election and that search engine manipulation was "a serious threat to the democratic system of government".[14] According to Epstein, "Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today's high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration."[14]
Throughout 2016, Epstein discussed the possibility of Google search algorithm manipulation in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.[15][16] He estimated in a September article that as many as three million votes in the upcoming election could be shifted as a result.[17] In 2017, former head of Google Search Amit Singhal directly disputed this, claiming that "Google has never ever re-ranked search results on any topic (including elections) to manipulate user sentiment."[18]
In a 2017 article, Epstein criticized efforts by companies such as Google and Facebook to suppress fake news through algorithms, noting "the dangers in allowing big technology companies to decide which news stories are legitimate".[19]
Other journalists and researchers have expressed concerns similar to Epstein's. Safiya Noble cited Epstein's research about search engine bias in her 2018 book Algorithms of Oppression,[20] although she has expressed doubt that search engines ought to counter-balance the content of large, well-resourced and highly trained newsrooms with what she called "disinformation sites" and "propaganda outlets".[21] Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA focusing on "the relationships between technology and politics", agreed with Epstein that "the larger issue" of how search engines can shape users' views is "extremely important", but questioned how many undecided voters are using Google to them help decide who to vote for.[21]
The Los Angeles Times reported in March 2019 that Epstein's criticism of Google had been "warmly embraced" by some conservatives, a phenomenon that Epstein said "is driving me crazy".[21]
In July 2019, Epstein presented his research to the Senate Judiciary Committee, claiming that Google could manipulate "upwards of 15 million votes" in 2020 and recommending that Google's search index be made public. In a clarification to a question asked by Ted Cruz he also said that "2.6 million is a rock bottom minimum" for how many votes Google might have swung towards Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, and that "the range is between 2.6 million and up to 10.4 million votes".[22][23] Google dismissed Epstein's research as “nothing more than a poorly constructed conspiracy theory.”[24] Epstein's white paper was not peer-reviewed and was challenged by other researchers. Among the criticisms was that a small sample size was used to extrapolate conclusions about a population of millions and the lack of disclosure of the underlying methodology. Panagiotis Metaxas, a Massachusetts based Wellesley Liberal Arts College computer science professor, said the paper demonstrated a possibility of “what such an influence could have been if Google was manipulating its electoral search results,” adding "I and other researchers who have been auditing search results for years know that this did not happen.”[25]
