Dr. Robert Epstein on Big Tech Censorship

I am indeed dr. Robert Epstein the most important thing for you to know about me is that I'm the father of five wonderful children as it happens I'm also a research psychologist at the American Institute for behavioral research and technology I have been center center-left my whole adult life but I value my country and democracy more than I value any party or candidate that is why I'm speaking out today I'm here to explain why Google poses a serious threat to democracy how monitoring systems can protect us from companies like Google and how Congress can immediately end Google's worldwide monopoly on search my plan for ending that monopoly was published just yesterday in Businessweek I respectfully request that my article be entered into the Congressional Record it's attached to my full testimony it will be entered without objection I've been a research psychologist for nearly 40 years my PhD is from Harvard and since 1981 I've published extensively on AI and other topics some of my research has focused on Google on the company's massive surveillance operations censorship capabilities and unprecedented ability to manipulate the thinking of 2.5 billion people soon to be four plus billion I've written article articles about Google for Time magazine USA Today that kind of thing but also for the Daily Caller and even Russia's Sputnik news I reach out to diverse audiences because I believe the threats posed by Google and to a lesser extent Facebook are so serious that everyone needs to know about them here are just three disturbing findings from my research which adheres to the very highest standards of scientific integrity number one in 2016 Google's search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton whom I supported I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 elects related searches prior to Election Day and Google's search results were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton I know the number of votes that shifted because I've conducted dozens of controlled experiments that measure how opinions shift when search results are biased I call this shift seam the search engine manipulation effect which I first published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 bias search results can easily produce shifts in the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by up to 80% in some demographic groups because people blindly trust high-ranking search results over lower ones seem is an especially dangerous form of influence because it is in effect subliminal it also leaves no paper trail for authorities to trace it's an example of a short-lived or quote ephemeral experience that's a phrase you'll find in internal emails that have leaked recently from Google I'm now studying seven such manipulations like seem and unlike billboards or those Russian placed ads these manipulations are invisible and non-competitive they're controlled entirely by big tech companies and there is no way to counteract them number two on Election Day in 2018 the go vote reminder that Google displayed on its homepage gave one political party at least 800,000 more votes than it gave the other party that reminder was not a public service it was a vote manipulation number three in the weeks leading up to the 2018 election bias and Google search results may have shifted upwards of seventy eight point two million votes spread across many races to the candidates of one political party this number is based on bias in data captured by my 2018 monitoring system which preserved more than 47,000 election-related searches conducted by a diverse group of American voters I know how to stop big tech in its tracks and that brings me briefly here to monitoring systems and the proposal I published yesterday a 2015 phone call from the Attorney General of Mississippi prompted me to start a years-long project in which I have learned how to capture online ephemeral experiences in early 2016 I deployed a system that allowed my team to look over people's shoulders as they conducted online searches with their permission I deployed a more sophisticated system in 2018 and I'm raising funds now to build a much more comprehensive comprehensive system in 2021 that will allow us to catch big tech in the act to instantly spot when Facebook is biasing news feeds or when Twitter is suppressing tweets sent by Ann Coulter or Elizabeth Warren this system must be built to keep an eye on big tech in 2020 but if these companies all support the same candidate they will have the power to shift 15 million votes to that candidate to let big tech get away with subliminal manipulation on this scale would be to make the free and fair election meaningless finally regarding yesterday's article Congress can quickly end google's worldwide monopoly on search by declaring google's massive search index the database the company uses to generate search results to be a public Commons accessible accessible by all just as a 1956 consent decree forced AT&T to share all its patents there is precedent in both law and Google's business practices to justify taking this step which will make online search competitive again and dramatically diminish Google's power worldwide in 1961 Eisenhower warned about the possible rise of a technological elite that would control public policy without people's awareness that alien now exists and you must determine where we go from here chairman Cruz ranking member her oh no mrs. Blackburn other members of the committee democracy as originally conceived cannot survive big tech as currently empowered I look forward to your questions you