Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and best-selling author of Clinton Cash and Secret Empires, argued at Breitbart News’ “Masters of the Universe” town hall on Thursday that “transparency would be a good solution” for Google’s secretive algorithm.
At Breitbart News’ live town hall event, “Masters of the Universe: Big Tech vs. Free Speech and Privacy” in Louisiana on Thursday night, a member of the audience asked Schweizer about Google’s secret search algorithm what solutions there should be for Google’s search engine.
The Government Accountability Institute president suggested:
There are several proposals, one of the suggestions is that we should take Google’s algorithm make it a public utility, that’s one of the solutions. That is an interesting idea, I do not know if that is the best solution. The other one is to require some truth-in-advertising, or some transparency, so we know what is in the algorithm.
The problem is that Google has been dishonest about their algorithm for a very long time. Years ago, there were complaints by companies like Yelp and others that said that Google was putting them down further in the search and favoring their own companies. Google flat out denied and said that was not true; they said that the algorithm was just math. We do not control that; it’s just math. Well, research shows that they were completely lying and that they were tilting the scales in favor of other companies.
Schweizer continued:
The bottom line is that they have lied about the algorithm and there should be some transparency to expose what are some of the elements of the algorithm and people that monitor these things can convey in layman’s terms to us precisely what the algorithm is designed to do. The algorithm is math, but it’s biased depending on what the people are creating the algorithm what they want it to bias.
The Secret Empires author suggested that Google can suppress negative stories if they wish merely by adjusting their search algorithm. Schweizer said, “So if they say that they want to suppress negative stories about Hillary Clinton, the algorithm will do that. If they want to elevate negative stories about Bernie Sanders, they can do that. It’s all up to the operators.”
Schweizer also suggested that Google and Facebook have “more power than any company in human history.”
The Government Accountability Institute president said, “They are not just Internet companies. They are media companies, they are opinion companies, and they steer the national debate in ways that are unimaginable.”
The Clinton Cash author then suggested, “It is so secretive right now, and we don’t know how the sausage is being made, I think transparency would be a great solution.”