The folks at Project Veritas have really outdone themselves lately, with several factually indiscriminate videos claiming widespread bias against conservatives in the tech industry.
The group’s video from Monday is a 25-minute joyride through unsubstantiated allegations that Google bakes its political agenda into its search algorithms. The video, which was removed from YouTube, followed similar Project Veritas pieces alleging bias from Facebook and Pinterest.
Vimeo and Reddit have completely banned Project Veritas, which did not immediately return a request for comment. Twitter also previously suspended the content creator over its Pinterest story.
On Thursday, Project Veritas posted what was alleged to be an official Google document on how to protest – a document that appears to be fabricated and includes a fake email, resist@google.com. Google did not respond to a request for clarification on the authenticity of the document, but the document’s tone, along with the presence of errors, emoticons and all caps, suggest it’s not authentic.
A main part of the video on Google was the company’s head of responsible innovation, Jen Gennai. In a post on Medium, Gennai said that she was filmed without her consent during a dinner with people who claimed to work in tech and expressed an interest in mentoring young women of color. The tech workers actually were from Project Veritas, which Gennai said misrepresented what she said by suggesting she was a top Google executive and that the company wants to influence the 2020 elections.
“On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course,” Gennai wrote. “In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016.”
At one point in the video, Project Veritas cuts to Gennai saying, “We all got screwed in 2016. Again, it wasn’t just us. … So now we’re like, what happened there, and how do we prevent it from happening again?”
Project Veritas acknowledged it was unclear what she was referring to, but included the quote to suggest Google planned to interfere in the next presidential elections, an accusation that has been repeated throughout conservative media.
As in its Pinterest piece, the Google video includes an interview with an unidentified “insider” who works for the company. This person failed to provide evidence of censorship or bias against conservatives by Google, but went so far as to compare the company’s actions to fascism. The individual also claimed Google wants to “police” its users – again, with no evidence. This so-called insider added that he came forward because sunlight is the best disinfectant – strong words coming from someone wearing a coat, a hoodie and filmed in total darkness with a laughable voice augmentation to protect his identity.
The video made up for its lack of compelling evidence with an abundance of suggestions from O’Keefe that the way Google autofills searches for phrases like “Hilary Clinton’s emails” is somehow the sign of a censorship conspiracy.
And some prominent Republicans bought in. On a Wednesday interview with Fox Business Network, President Donald Trump referred to the video and a “hatred for the Republicans,” while claiming without evidence that tech companies are made up entirely of Democrats and are biased against Republicans.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington retweeted Project Veritas listing its recent suspensions and blocked videos, and she added, “The Left is not for free speech. The media is not interested in this, what’s the word… ‘collusion.’”
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, also weighed in with a press release responding to Project Veritas’ video on Google, claiming that “Google’s biases are now a threat to a free and fair election.” He accused Google of censorship, “meddling in our election process” and pushing a “social justice narrative,” claims that weren’t backed up in the Project Veritas video.
Two weeks ago, Project Veritas ran a video that suggested inaccurately that Pinterest had blocked far-right site Live Action for containing pornographic content. Pinterest had blocked Live Action for promoting misinformation, including anti-vax content. The video was banned by YouTube and Twitter.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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