Evidence of the previously-reported use of whitelists for so-called “election authorities” by the Google Search team members has been provided to Valuetainment by the source of the leaks, Erfan Azimi. Azimi has shared with us the screenshots of the code, and provided clarity on how exactly Google is manipulating its search results on election topics.
In this document we find the presence of the “is ElectionAuthority” flag within Google’s Application Programming Interface (API). The flag description also shows the existence of an algorithm named “go/election-authority,” which is currently a private and hidden feature within Google’s code. According to Azimi, a search-engine-optimization professional, this flag may be attributed to websites manually selected by Google employees.
Azimi reports that the documents were obtained after Google employees accidentally made them publicly available on GitHub.com, allowing Azimi to archive them. On Wednesday, Google confirmed the authenticity of the leaked documents.
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As Valuetainment previously reported, SEO expert Rand Fishkin reported in SparkToro that he had obtained thousands of pages of leaked documents from Google’s Search Division, showing that the tech company engages in whitelists for election-related searches.
The documents provided evidence of many search manipulations that Google had denied implementing over the years, including using click-centric user signals, the existence of a “NavBoost” system for ranking quality, and whitelists for COVID-19 and election-related searches. Erfan Azimi, as the source of the leaks, hopes to increase transparency and hold Google accountable for its actions.
The question of what websites should be considered election authorities strikes at the heart of political divides. The validity of the 2020 presidential election has been called into question by Donald Trump, as many world leaders throughout history have called into question their own elections.
Silicon Valley tech companies have often been criticized by conservatives for influencing elections. According to a CNBC report in 2020, 88 percent of political donations by Google employees went to Democrats. Critics point to the overwhelmingly liberal bias in tech companies as a motive for their manipulation of their platforms for political reasons. The full scale of this whitelist is still unknown to the public, but Google’s left-wing tilt suggests it would promote left-wing authorities.
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