Corporations have tried to influence legislatures through lobbying and consumers through advertising for as long as I can remember. In 2010, there was a transformation in Corporate activism as a result of a Supreme Court ruling entitled Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allowing unions, corporations and associations, to spend unlimited amounts in elections provided that they don’t give money directly to a candidates campaign or coordinate their efforts with a candidate. This money went largely to super PACs (political action committees) who are permitted to receive unrestricted donations from individuals, corporations, and unions. This increased spending was recorded in corporate and Super PACs public records.
In 1970, Milton Friedman famously argued that the only responsibility of business to society is to increase profits. Corporations are now expected to take positions on issues that effect not only profit but people and the planet. Some examples are; climate change, health care reform, gun control, race relations, LGBTQ, discrimination, gender and marriage equality, and reproductive rights. The impact of the corporations position on these issues can affect profits and public opinion of the organization both in the negative and positive. At least this is a controversy that is out in the open and will result in either increased or decreased sales and profits.
There is a new form of corporate activism on the horizon, where products or services of the company are used to advocate positions which are not publicly announced and are done in the shadows Several high tech companies are manipulating free speech and public opinion. This activity is especially dangerous because it is hidden within the platforms that are operated by the company. Recently there have been hearings on Capital Hill about censorship and public opinion manipulation by Big Tech ncluding Google/YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. All of these companies have denied bias in their restrictions of free speech but information has been released by whistle blowers and in Congressional testimony that prove otherwise.
Dr. Robert Epstein, (center/left Democrat), a Senior Research Psychologist at American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology, testified before the US Senate on June 16, 2019, on Google’s serious threat to Democracy. He testified that, “ in 2016, biased search results likely impacted undecided voters that gave 2.6 million votes to Hilary Clinton by placing favorable articles about her on the first page of search results” in 13,000 screen shots captured by Dr. Epstein “On election day in 2018, the “go vote” reminders Google displayed on its home page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party” based on 47,000 captured searches.
The problem with Big Tech companies is that they have the power to determine what content billions of people worldwide will or will not see. Google (who owns You Tube) deletes or blocks access to videos on YouTube and millions of websites” Often these actions are not explained or justified to the creators of the content. This invisible manipulation could result in the destruction of free and fair elections since 88% of all US searches are on Google. All of this monopolistic activity is done without leaving a paper trail since these corporations view their algorithms as trade secrets and not subject to information requests from anyone The only way to prove this bias was to capture real time screen shots of computer displays as accomplished by Dr. Epstein.
Prager University is currently suing Google/You Tube in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for placing over 25% of its 400, 5 minute videos on a restricted list. This action prevents those videos from being shown in school, libraries and homes that have filters meant to ban pornographic and violent content. Section 230 of the Communication Decency act gives Big Tech liability protection to screen “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable” material from their platforms. They have used this Section of the law to ban ideas that Big Tech disagrees with. For example, one Prager U video on the Ten Commandments was banned because it included the phrase “Thou shall not murder” which was labeled as violent speech by Google/You Tube.
Dr Epstein’s suggested solution is to declare Google’s massive Search Index to be a public asset available to all. The Search Index is similar to an index in a library which lists information about all the books the library has available except in this case it lists all the web pages Google knows about. This action would be similar to the governments anti-monopoly action in 1956 which forced AT&T to share all its patents which opened up the telephone market to unprecedented growth. Search will become competitive, as it was during its early years, and democracy will be protected from Google’s secretive machinations.
