With a recent surge in censorship of pro-life and conservative views, Google has admitted to interference in Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum, which Google claims was to “help voters.”
Numerous videos from Project Veritas, a pro-life organization, were blacklisted from YouTube, which is owned by Google. When users searched for specific terms, Google manually altered search results, meaning videos selected by Google appeared at the top of search results.
This interference from Google came one week before Ireland’s referendum, which allowed abortion nationwide. Searches such as “irish catholic,” unborn life,” and “abortion is wrong,” were affected by Google’s manipulation of the system.
The document leaked to Project Veritas was later corroborated by the Breitbart news organization.
Some blacklisted phrases relating to the referendum were:
- “abortion is wrong”
- “abortion is barbaric”
- “abortion is murdering”
- “Murder of innocent babies”
- “Repeal the 8th”
- “Right to life”
- “abortion and Down syndrome”
- “abortion and the Catholic Church”
- “child murder”
In a statement to Breitbart, Google stated: “In the midst of the Irish referendum on abortion, our systems brought authoritative content to the top of our search results for abortion-related queries. This happened for both pro-choice and pro-life queries, there was no distinction.”
Many Irish voters are upset with this news. Irish Catholic and pro-life campaigner Namh Uí Bhriain said in a statement, “[W]e do not know which content was blocked, and which was promoted. This is obvious interference in a democratic vote.”
Many speculate that Google was controlling what content was accessible in the crucial days before the vote. John McGuirk, of the pro-life group SaveThe8th, said:
“We simply do not know which videos were promoted, and which were pushed down the order, or what impact that had on voter choices.”
The Life Institute of Ireland released a statement on the issue in document form in which they blamed Google and the media for perceived bias. Life Institute also blamed “The Google Factor” for the loss, claiming that by banning advertisements from both sides, Google was favoring the pro-abortion side.
“Google claimed that they were playing fair by banning advertisements from both sides, but that’s nonsense. The Yes campaign didn’t need Google.” The study noted that the pro-abortion side had the support of major media outlets.
If Google is censoring pro-life voices in Ireland, you better believe they would do it here in America. Senator Ted Cruz said in a Judiciary Subcomittee hearing:
“If we have tech companies using the powers of monopoly to censor political speech, I think that raises real antitrust issues.”
Twitter, Facebook and Google have denied their platforms being politically biased, but the evidence, particularly from the Irish abortion referendum campaign, shows otherwise.
