China and Big Pharma Censoring Scientific Articles on the Web

Here is another article reposted from Mercola.com concerning internet censorship of unauthorized factual data. You will be want to read this.

One of my own Simple Explanation science articles was denounced just this week. Do you really need to be protected from the truth?  

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

·    NewsGuard recently announced that my site has been classified as fake news because we have reported the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially having been leaked from the biosafety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan City, China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak

·    According to NewsGuard, “There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and genomic evidence has found that the virus is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus”

·    NewsGuard’s position is in direct conflict with published scientific evidence suggesting this virus was created in a lab and not zoonotically transmitted

·    SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bat coronavirus modified to integrate spike proteins that allows the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors, as well as an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which impairs immune function

·    Many mainstream media, U.S. and U.K. government officials, and even Chinese researchers, report that suspicions about SARS-CoV-2 having been created in and leaked from the BSL4 facility in Wuhan cannot be discounted, and that directions to censor reports about the virus’ origin is coming from the Chinese government

NewsGuard has classified mercola.com as fake news because we have reported the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially having been leaked from the biosafety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan City, China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

NewsGuard’s intern Nina Zweig (edited by deputy editor John Gregory) referred to my February 4, 2020, article, “Novel Coronavirus — The Latest Pandemic Scare,” in which I stated:

"In January 2018, China’s first maximum security virology laboratory (biosecurity level 4) designed for the study of the world’s most dangerous pathogens opened its doors — in Wuhan.^1,2 Is it pure coincidence that Wuhan City is now the epicenter of this novel coronavirus infection?

The year before, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety consultant, expressed concern about viral threats potentially escaping the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory,³ which happens to be located just 20 miles from the Wuhan market identified as ground zero for the current NCIP outbreak.⁴”

According to NewsGuard,⁵ “There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and genomic evidence has found that the virus is ‘96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus.’”

Evidence Suggests SARS-CoV-2 Is a Modified Bat Coronavirus

Sure, as detailed in my April 26, 2020, interview with bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, SARS-CoV-2 started out with a bat coronavirus, but scientific evidence has revealed much more about this virus, none of which NewsGuard is bothering to take into account before classifying and censoring reports as “misinformation.”

Importantly, there’s compelling scientific evidence published in many prominent scientific journals showing this virus was indeed created in a lab and not zoonotically transmitted (transmitted naturally from animal to human).

As explained by Boyle, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bat coronavirus⁶ that was modified to integrate spike proteins that allow the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors. It’s also been modified to integrate an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which tends to impair the immune system.

Additionally, Boyle strongly suspects nanotechnology was used in its creation as well, as its exceptional ability to stay airborne for long periods of time is a nanotech hallmark.⁷

NewsGuard’s arbitrary dismissal of my February 4 article as fake news is equally inappropriate even if the virus is “all natural” and zoonotically transmitted. As reported by The Daily Mail, April 11, 2020:⁸

“The laboratory at the center of scrutiny over the pandemic has been carrying out research on bats from the cave which scientists believe is the original source of the devastating outbreak.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday show the Wuhan Institute of Virology undertook coronavirus experiments on mammals captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan — funded by a $3.7 million grant from the US government. Sequencing of the Covid-19 genome has traced it to bats found in Yunnan's caves.”

Governments Are Not Dismissing Possibility of a Leak

An April 14, 2020, report^9,10 by The Washington Post highlighted the fact that U.S. State Department cables from two years ago warned there were inadequate safety precautions and procedures in place at Wuhan’s BSL4 facility, and April 15, 2020, Fox News reported¹¹ that “State Department leaked cables renew theories on origin of coronavirus.”

Yet NewsGuard, the thought police advertising front group for industries like Big Pharma and tobacco, simply dismisses and wants to bury this information. Such censorship has no room in a democratic and free society. I would argue that shutting down conversations about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is a direct threat to democracy and indeed to science itself.

Will NewsGuard classify The Washington Post’s and Fox News’ articles as “misinformation” as well? Fox News quotes Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff¹²

"It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we've had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don't know for certain."

As you may have noticed, in my “flagged” February 4 article I didn’t even make an assertion, I merely asked the question: “Is it pure coincidence that Wuhan City is now the epicenter of this novel coronavirus infection?”

February 16, 2020, Chinese scientists even raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of bioweapons research leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. See the video below for this report.

Since my February 4 article, I’ve become increasingly convinced — through reviewing the scientific literature that NewsGuard ignores or is unaware of — that SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be a synthetic virus, likely created and released (inadvertently or not) from one or more laboratories that worked on weaponizing SARS and bat coronaviruses.

According to an April 5, 2020, article¹³ in Daily Mail, British government officials are also considering the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan facility, stating the possibility of this “is no longer being discounted.” Will NewsGuard classify Daily Mail as a misinformant?

Will they accuse Gen. Milley of spreading fake news? How about Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, who tweeted¹⁴ an April 16 Fox News report¹⁵ about SARS-CoV-2 being leaked from the Wuhan lab “as part of China’s efforts to compete with U.S.”?

Ironically, Carr even commented, “I’m old enough to remember when posting this would get you deplatformed.” Apparently, the abusive power of censorship that Twitter and other tech platforms have has not escaped the FCC.

Is NewsGuard Protecting Chinese Interests?

Interestingly, an April 16, 2020, report¹⁶ by CNN reveals the censorship of articles mentioning the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have leaked from the Wuhan BSL4 facility appears to come from China, which means NewsGuard is functionally protecting Chinese interests and inhibiting scientific inquiry. CNN writes:¹⁷

“China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices¹⁸ published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web.

Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts …

The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic …

According to the directive issued by the Ministry of Education's science and technology department, ‘academic papers about tracing the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed’ …

A Chinese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation said the move was a worrying development that would likely obstruct important scientific research.

‘I think it is a coordinated effort from (the) Chinese government to control (the) narrative, and paint it as if the outbreak did not originate in China,’ the researcher told CNN. ‘And I don't think they will really tolerate any objective study to investigate the origination of this disease.’"

US Funded Wuhan Laboratory

As I mention in my interview with Boyle, while the biosafety level 4 (BSL4) lab in Wuhan may have leaked the virus, the U.S. may have played a role in its creation. For starters, the chairman of the Harvard department of chemistry, nanoscience expert, Charles Lieber, Ph.D., was arrested earlier this year by federal agencies, suspected of illegal dealings with China.¹⁹ Lieber has denied the allegations.

Lieber allegedly oversaw the Nano Key Laboratory, a joint collaboration by the Wuhan University of Technology and Harvard, although Harvard officials claim they had no knowledge of the lab before 2015. In our interview, Boyle dismisses the idea that Harvard was unaware Lieber was working on nanotechnology for biological materials with the Chinese as “preposterous.”

NPR, which summarized the allegations as being centered around a Chinese recruitment program, added even more serious allegations, saying Lieber:²⁰

“… faces charges of trading knowledge for money and lying about it. Prosecutors allege he set up a lab in China in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from the Chinese government and then denied knowledge of those payments to U.S. investigators … others watching the case say it raises important questions about ethics, scientific openness and possible racial profiling in an era of geopolitical tension.”

Lieber’s attorney declined to comment on the charges, NPR said. It’s also noteworthy that both the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have funded research at the Wuhan BSL4 facility, including research on bat coronaviruses.^21,22

Arizona senator Martha McSally told Fox news,²³ “The NIH must immediately stop deploying American tax dollars to China for this dangerous research.” Justin Goodman, vice president for advocacy and public policy for the White Coat Waste Project added:²⁴

“The U.S. government’s spending spree that we’ve exposed at the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology is outrageous and unacceptable. Taxpayers should never be forced to bankroll China’s hazardous bio-agent experiments, which put human life around the world gravely at risk. We’ll continue to work with our advocates and Congress to put an end to this egregious misuse of Americans' tax dollars."

April 14, 2020, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz tweeted,²⁵ “At best, Americans are funding people who are lying to us. At worst, we’re funding people who we knew had problems handling pathogens, who then birthed a monster virus onto the world.”

NewsGuard Also Promotes Censorship via Public Libraries

NewsGuard has set itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” based on nine “credibility and transparency” factors, not only for information viewed on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible in schools and public libraries²⁶ — more than 700 libraries across the globe so far.²⁷

Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers, tablets and cell phones. Once you’ve installed the NewsGuard browser plugin on your computer or cellphone, the NewsGuard icon rating will appear on all Google and Bing searches and on articles featured in your social media news feeds.

The NewsGuard ratings are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. Fake news is certainly a problem. But determining who should have the final word on credibility and what is “truth” is not a simple one. Who is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers, i.e., NewsGuard?

NewsGuard Protects Big Industries

To understand NewsGuard’s agenda, you need to know something about its creation and funding. Aside from internet giants Microsoft²⁸ and Google, NewsGuard is backed by companies that are involved in advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.

NewsGuard's $6 million startup was funded in part by the Publicis Groupe,²⁹ the “third largest global communications group” according to the Publicis website.³⁰ Publicis was founded in 1926 by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, a French entrepreneur, with the goal of improving the image of advertising and turning it into “a real profession.” In fact, Publicis Groupe’s name is derived in part from the French word for advertising.³¹

The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet.

With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or sugar, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big industries. In 1983, Publicis introduced the concept of global communication driven by marketing.

Within the Publicis Groupe are four networks serving its clients,³² including Publicis Health,³³ which once boasted on the website that its clients are "some of the biggest and most exciting names in health and wellness,” but has now taken that claim down and moved it to job postings.³⁴

Publicis Scoops Up Top Vaccine Companies

The list of clients that once appeared on the health site’s wallpaper has also been taken down, but were proudly listed in an October 2019 Business Wire news release on Publicis’ third quarter revenue report — which, by the way, was up an impressive 17.3%.³⁵

The report shows that Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and Regeneron, just to name a few, have come onboard — showing that Publicis is now working for Big Pharma’s top dogs: vaccine companies.

By happenstance, Regeneron just announced that it’s working on a coronavirus vaccine and treatment.³⁶ Regeneron is also partnering with Sanofi to find a COVID-19 treatment; Sanofi is independently working on its own COVID-19 vaccine.³⁷

The Publicis Health board also consists of a power pack of high-profile individuals with Big Pharma position backgrounds or affiliations.^{38,39,40,41,42,43} Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from smoking, is also part of Publicis.^44,45

To put icing on the cake, Publicis has also added Google and Facebook Messenger to their repertoire.⁴⁶ When you consider that Publicis now describes its business model approach as putting clients and their needs and objectives at the center of all they do so their clients can “win and grow,” it’s easy to see what’s driving NewsGuard.

What You Can Do to STOP This Abuse

Overall, NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competitors and analysts who empower you with information that runs counter to any given industry’s agenda.

You can learn more about NewsGuard in my previous articles, “Beware: New Plan to Censor Health Websites” and “Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Big Pharma.”

If you’re as disturbed by censorship as I am, be sure to contact your local library today to find out if they’re one of the more than 700 libraries using NewsGuard. If they are, then ask them if they’re aware of NewsGuard’s censorship of truthful news that is now encroaching on scientific freedom and threatening the very roots of our democracy.

If your local library is using NewsGuard, it would be helpful to start a campaign to get it removed. Contact your neighbors and let them know Newsguard is owned by a pharmaceutical public relations firm that censors information damaging to their clients' interests.

Repost: Beware of Google!

I'm reposting this excellent article from the Dr. Mercola website, explaining the insidious effects of Google. Big Brother is Watching!

BIG BROTHER HAS SINCE TAKEN DOWN MOST OF MERCOLA'S ONLINE LIBRARY. YOU CAN NO LONGER FIND THE MERCOLA ARTICLES AT HIS SITE

You can find the article at mercola.com articles.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

·    Robert Epstein is a Harvard trained psychologist who has exposed how Google is manipulating public opinion through their search engine so they can change the results of elections and many other important areas

·    His research shows how Google is using new techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history. If this weren’t bad enough, these tools are ephemeral and leave no paper trail of their devious behavior

·    According to Epstein’s calculations, Google can shift 15 million votes leading up to the upcoming U.S. presidential 2020 election

·    Because Google has become and everyday tool that's used for more than 90% of searches worldwide, the company has likely determined the outcomes of 25% of the national elections in the world

·    Search suggestions — shown in a drop-down menu when you begin to type a search term — is another powerful manipulation tool capable of turning a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split, with no one having the slightest idea that they've been manipulated

Robert Epstein, who received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard in 1981 and served as the former editor in chief at Psychology Today, is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google's manipulative and deceptive practices. He explains what got him interested in investigating the internet search monopoly in the first place:

"In 2012, January 1st, I received some emails from Google saying my website contained malware and that they were somehow blocking access. This means I had gotten onto one of Google's blacklists.

My website did contain some malware. It was pretty easy to get rid of, but it turns out it's hard to get off of a Google blacklist. That's a big problem. I started looking at Google just a little bit differently.

I wondered, first of all, why they were notifying me about this rather than some government agency or some nonprofit organization? Why was a private company notifying me?

In other words, who made Google sheriff of the internet? Second, I learned they had no customer service department, which seemed very strange, so if you have a problem with Google, then you have a problem because they don't help you solve the problem.

I learned also that although you can get onto a blacklist in a split second, it can take weeks to get off a blacklist. There have been businesses that have gotten onto their blacklists and have gone out of business while they're trying to straighten out the problem.

The thing that really caught my eye — because I've been a programmer my whole life — was I couldn't figure out how they were blocking access to my website, not just through their own products … Google.com, the search engine, or through Chrome, which is their browser, but through Safari, which is an Apple product, through Firefox, which is a browser run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization.

How was Google blocking access through so many different means? The point is I just started to get more curious about the company, and later in 2012, I happened to be looking at a growing literature, which was about the power of search rankings to impact sales.

This was in the marketing field and it just was astonishing. In other words, if you could push yourself up one more notch in their search results, that could make the difference between success or failure for your company; it could mean a lot more income.

It turns out that this initial research was saying that people really trust those higher ranked search results. I simply asked a question. I wondered whether, if people trust those higher rank search results, I could use search results to influence people's opinions, maybe even their votes."

What Epstein discovered through his subsequent research, which began in 2013, is that yes, biased search results can indeed be used to influence public opinion and sway undecided voters. What's more, the strength of that influence was shocking.

He also eventually discovered how Google is able to block website access on browsers other than their own. His findings were published in 2016 in U.S. News & World Report.¹

Advertisement

---

Google's Powers Pose Serious Threats to Society

Google's powers pose three specific threats to society:

1.They're a surveillance agency with significant yet hidden surveillance powers. As noted by Epstein:

"The search engine … Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive, YouTube, these are surveillance platforms. In other words, from their perspective, the value these tools have is they give them more information about you. Surveillance is what they do."

2.They're a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what people can and cannot see. They even have the ability to block access to entire countries and the internet as a whole.

The most crushing problem with this kind of internet censorship is that you don't know what you don't know. If a certain type of information is removed from search, and you don't know it should exist somewhere, you'll never go looking for it. And, when searching for information online, how would you know that certain websites or pages have been removed from the search results in the first place? The answer is, you don't.

For example, Google has been investing in DNA repositories for quite a long time, and are adding DNA information to our profiles. According to Epstein, Google has taken over the national DNA repository, but articles about that — which he has cited in his own writings — have all vanished.

3.They have the power to manipulate public opinion through search rankings and other means.

"To me, that's the scariest area," Epstein says, "because Google is shaping the opinions, thinking, beliefs, attitudes, purchases and votes of billions of people around the world without anyone knowing that they're doing so … and perhaps even more shocking, without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.

They're using new techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history and they are for the most part, subliminal … but they don't produce tiny shifts.

They produce enormous shifts in people's thinking, very rapidly. Some of the techniques I've discovered are among the largest behavioral effects ever discovered in the behavioral sciences."

While surveillance is Google's primary business, their revenue — which exceeds $130 billion a year — comes almost exclusively from advertising. All that personal information you've provided them through their various products is sold to advertisers looking for a specific target audience.

How Google Can Shift Your Perception Without Your Knowledge

Epstein's controlled, randomized, double-blind and counterbalanced experiments have revealed a number of different ways in which Google can shift public perception. The first effect he discovered is called SEME, which stands for search engine manipulation effect. For a full description of the basic experiment used to identify this effect, please listen to the interview.

In summary, the aim of his experiment was to see whether search results biased toward a particular political candidate would be capable of shifting users' political opinion and leanings.

"I had predicted, when we first did this, that we would get a shift," Epstein says, "because … people do trust higher ranked search results, and of course we had biased the search results so that, if in that first group, someone was clicking on a high-ranking search result, that would connect them to a webpage which made one candidate look much better than the other …

I predicted we could get a shift in voting preferences of 2% to 3%. I was way off. We got … a shift of 48%, which I thought must be an error because that's crazy …

I should note that in almost all of our experiments, especially those early ones, we deliberately used undecided voters. That's the key. You can't easily push the opinions or voting preferences of people who are partisan, who are strongly committed to one party or another, but people who are undecided, those are the people who are very vulnerable. In our experiments, we always find a way to use undecided voters.

In these early experiments, the way we guaranteed that our voters were undecided was by using people from the U.S. as our participants, but the election we chose was the 2010 election for the prime minister of Australia.

They're real candidates, a real election, real search results, real webpages, and of course, because our participants were from the U.S. they were not familiar with the candidates.

In fact, that's why, before they do the search, we get this almost perfect 50/50 split regarding who they're going to vote for, because they don't know these candidates. The information they're getting from the search, that, presumably, is why we get a shift."

Simple Trick Effectively Masks Search Bias

Another thing Epstein noticed was that very few seemed to realize they were seeing biased search results. In other words, the manipulation went virtually undetected.

In a second experiment, they were able to achieve a 63% shift in voter preference, and by masking the bias — simply by inserting a pro-opponent result here and there — they were able to hide the bias from almost everyone.

"In other words, we could get enormous shifts in opinions and voting preferences with no one being able to detect the bias in the search results we were showing them," Epstein says. "This is where, again, it starts to get scary. Scarier still is when we moved on to do a national study of more than 2,000 people in all 50 states."

What this large-scale investigation revealed is that the few who actually notice the bias are not protected from its effects. Curiously, they actually shift even further toward the bias, rather than away from it.

As evidenced by other studies, the pattern of clicks is a key factor that makes search bias so powerful: 50% of all search selections go to the top two items and 95% of all clicks go to the first page of search results.

"In other words, people spend most of their time clicking on and reading content that comes from high-ranking search results. If those high-ranking search results favor one candidate, that's pretty much all they see and that impacts their opinions and their voting preferences," Epstein says.

Subsequent experiments revealed that this click pattern is the result of conditioning. Most of the things people search for are simple matters such as local weather or the capital of a country. The most appropriate and correct answer is always at the very top. This conditions them to assume that the best and truest answer is always the most high-ranked listing.

Google May Have Shifted Millions of Votes in 2016 Elections

The ramifications of the search engine manipulation effect can be immense. Of course, having power to shift public opinion is one thing; actually using that power is another. So, Epstein's next target was to determine whether Google is using its power of influence or not.

"Early 2016, I set up the first-ever monitoring system, which allowed me to look over the shoulders of people as they were conducting election-related searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. I had 95 field agents (as we call them), in 24 states.

We kept their identities secret, which took a lot of work. And this is exactly, by the way, what the Nielsen company does to generate ratings for television shows. They have several thousand families. Their identities are secret. They equip the families with special boxes, which allow Nielsen to tabulate what programs they're watching …

Inspired by the Nielsen model, we recruited our field agents, we equipped them with custom passive software. In other words, no one could detect the fact that they have the software in their computers. But that software allowed us to look over their shoulders as they conducted election related searches …

We ended up preserving 13,207 election-related searches and the nearly 100,000 webpages to which the search results linked … After the election, we rated the webpages for bias, either pro-Clinton or pro-Trump … and then we did an analysis to see whether there was any bias in the search results people were seeing.

The results we got were crystal clear, highly significant statistically … at the 0.001 level. What that says is we can be confident the bias we were seeing was real, and it didn't occur because of some random factors. We found a pro-Clinton bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google search results, but not on Bing or Yahoo.

That's very important. So, there was a significant pro-Clinton bias on Google. Because of the experiments I had been doing since 2013, I was also able to calculate how many votes could have been shifted with that level of bias… At bare minimum, about 2.6 million [undecided] votes would have shifted to Hillary Clinton."

On the high end, Google's biased search results may have shifted as many as 10.4 million undecided voters toward Clinton, which is no small feat — all without anyone realizing they'd been influenced, and without leaving a trace for the authorities to follow.

According to Epstein's calculations, tech companies, Google being the main one, can shift 15 million votes leading up to the 2020 election, which means they have the potential to select the next president of United States.

Google Has the Power to Determine 25% of Global Elections

Many who look at Epstein's work end up focusing on Google's ability to influence U.S. politics, but the problem is much bigger than that.

"As I explained when I testified before Congress, the reason why I'm speaking out about these issues is because, first of all, I … think it's important that we preserve democracy and preserve the free and fair election. To me, it's pretty straight forward.

But the problem is much bigger than elections or democracy or the United States. Because I calculated back in 2015 that … Google's search engine — because more than 90% of searches worldwide are conducted on Google — was determining the outcomes of upwards of 25% of the national elections in the world.

How can that be? Well, it's because a lot of elections are very close. And that's the key to understanding this. In other words, we actually looked at the win margins in national elections around the world, which tend to be very close. In that 2010 Australian election, for example, the win margin was something like 0.2% …

If the results they're getting on Google are biased toward one candidate, that shifts a lot of votes among undecided people. And it's very, very simple for them to flip an election or … rig an election … It's very, very simple for Google to do that.

They can do it deliberately, which is kind of scary. In other words, some top executives at Google could decide who they want to win an election in South Africa or the U.K. or anywhere. It could be just a rogue employee at Google who does it. You may think that's impossible … [but] it's incredibly simple …

[A] senior software engineer at Google, Shumeet Baluja, who's been at Google almost since the very beginning, published a novel that no one's ever heard of called 'The Silicon Jungle' … It's fictional, but it's about Google, and the power that individual employees at Google have to make or break any company or any individual.

It's a fantastic novel. I asked Baluja how Google let him get away with publishing it and he said, 'Well, they made me promise I would never promote it.' That's why no one's ever heard of this book."

A Dictator Unlike Anything the World Has Ever Known

Another, and even more frightening possibility, is that Google could allow its biased algorithm to favor one candidate over another without caring about which candidate is being favored.

"That's the scariest possibility," Epstein says, "because now you've got an algorithm, a computer program, which is an idiot … deciding who rules us. It's crazy."

While this sounds like it should be illegal, it's not, because there are no laws or regulations that restrict or dictate how Google must rank its search results. Courts have actually concluded that Google is simply exercising its right to free speech, even if that means destroying the businesses they demote in their search listings or black listings.

The only way to protect ourselves from this kind of hidden influence is by setting up monitoring programs such as Epstein's all over the world. "As a species, it's the only way we can protect ourselves from new types of online technologies that can be used to influence us," he says. "No dictator anywhere has ever had even a tiny fraction of the power that this company has."

Epstein is also pushing for government to make the Google search index a public commons, which would allow other companies to create competing search platforms using Google's database. While Google's search engine cannot be broken up, its monopoly would be thwarted by forcing it to hand over its index to other search platform developers.

The Influence of Search Suggestions

In 2016, Epstein also discovered the remarkable influence of search suggestions — the suggested searches shown in a drop-down menu when you begin to type a search term. This effect is now known as the search suggestion effect or SSE. Epstein explains:

"Initially the idea was they were going to save you time. That's the way they presented this new feature. They were going to anticipate, based on your history, or based on what other people are searching for, what it is you're looking for so you don't have to type the whole thing. Just click on one of the suggestions. But then it changed into something else. It changed into a tool for manipulation.

In June 2016, a small news organization … discovered that it was virtually impossible to get negative search suggestions related to Hillary Clinton, but easy to get them for other people including Donald Trump. They were very concerned about this because maybe that could influence people somehow.

So, I tried this myself, and I have a wonderful image that I preserved showing this. I typed in 'Hillary Clinton is' on Bing and on Yahoo, and I got those long lists, eight and 10 items, saying, 'Hillary Clinton is the devil. Hillary Clinton is sick' … all negative things that people were actually searching for.

How do I know that? Because we checked Google trends. Google trends shows you what people are actually searching for. Sure enough, people were actually searching for all these negative things related to Hillary Clinton. Those [were] the most popular search terms.

So, we tried it on Google and we got, 'Hillary Clinton is winning, Hillary Clinton is awesome.' Now you check those phrases on Google trends and you find no one is searching for 'Hillary Clinton is awesome.' Nobody. Not one. But that's what they're showing you in their search suggestions.

That again got my research gears running. I started doing experiments because I said, 'Wait a minute, why would they do this? What is the point?'

Here's what I found in a series of experiments: Just by manipulating search suggestions, I could turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split — with no one having the slightest idea that they've been manipulated."

YouTube's Up Next Algorithm

YouTube, which is owned by Google, also has enormous influence on public opinion. According to Epstein, 70% of the videos people view on YouTube are suggested by Google's top secret Up Next algorithm, which recommends videos for you to view whenever you're watching a video.

Just like the search suggestions, this is a phenomenally effective ephemeral manipulation tool. There's no record of the videos recommended by the algorithm, yet it can take you down the proverbial rabbit hole by feeding you one video after another.

"There are documented cases now in which people have been converted to extreme Islam or to white supremacy, literally because they'd been pulled down a rabbit hole by a sequence of videos on YouTube," Epstein says.

"Think of that power. Again, it's not powerful for people who already have strong opinions. It's powerful for the people who don't, the people who are vulnerable, the people who are undecided or uncommitted. And that's a lot of people."

The Creepy Line

Most people now have Amazon Prime. If you are one of those who do, you can watch the following documentary for free on Prime. It is well worth your time to do so. Epstein and many other experts provide a very compelling overview of the dangers that we discuss in our interview. In my view, this is a must-watch and one to recommend to your friends and family.

A question Epstein raises is, "Who gave this private company, which is not accountable to any of us, the ability to determine what billions of people around the world will see or will not see?"

That is perhaps one of the biggest issues. Epstein and others attempt to answer this question in this documentary, "The Creepy Line," which is a direct quote from Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

"Traditional media have very serious constraints placed on them, but Google, which is far more penetrating and far more effective at influencing people, has none of these constraints," Epstein says.

"There are lots of good people in ['The Creepy Line'], lots of good data, and it explains my research very clearly, which is wonderful. It explains my research better than I explain my research. 'The Creepy Line' is available on iTunes and on Amazon. I think it costs $3 or $4 to watch … If you're an Amazon Prime Member it's free. It's an excellent film."

Google Runs a Total Surveillance State

In his article² "Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy," Epstein outlines his recommendations for protecting your privacy while surfing the web, most of which don't cost anything. You can access the article at: MySevenSimpleSteps.com

"My first sentence is 'I have not received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone since 2014.' Most people are shocked by that because they're bombarded with targeted ads constantly.

More and more people are telling me that they're just having a conversation with someone, so they're not even doing anything online per se, but their phone is nearby — or they're having a conversation in their home and they have Amazon Alexa or Google Home, these personal assistants — and the next thing they know they start getting targeted ads related to what they were talking about.

This is the surveillance problem … The point is that there are ways to use the internet, tablets and mobile phones, to preserve or protect your privacy, but almost no one does that. So, the fact is that we're now being surveilled 24/7, generally speaking, with no awareness that we're even being surveilled.

Maybe some people are aware that when they do searches on Google the search history is preserved forever … But it goes so far beyond that because now we're being surveilled through personal assistants, so that when we speak, we're being [surveilled].

It goes even beyond that, because a few years ago Google bought the Nest company, which makes a smart thermostat. After they bought the company, they put microphones into the smart thermostats, and the latest versions of the smart thermostats have microphones and cameras.

Google has been issued patents in recent years, which give them, basically, ownership rights over ways of analyzing sounds that are picked up by microphones in people's homes.

They can hook you up with dentists, they can hook you up with sex therapists, with mental health services, relationship coaches, et cetera. So, there's that. Location tracking has also gotten completely out of hand. We've learned in recent months that even when you disable location tracking … on your mobile phone, you're still being tracked."

This is one of the reasons I strongly recommend that you use a VPN on your cellphone and computer, as this will prevent virtually anyone from tracking and targeting you. There are many out there but I am using the one Epstein recommends, Nord VPN, which is only about $3 per month and you can use it on up to six devices. In my view, this is a must if you seek to preserve your privacy.

How Google Tracks You Even When You're Offline

You can learn a lot about a person by tracking their movements and whereabouts. Most of us are very naïve about these things. As explained by Epstein, location tracking technology has become incredibly sophisticated and aggressive.

Android cellphones, for example, which are a Google-owned operating system, can track you even when you're not connected to the internet, whether you have geo tracking enabled or not.

"It just gets creepier and creepier," Epstein says. "Let's say you pull out your SIM card. Let's say you disconnect from your mobile service provider, so you're absolutely isolated. You're not connected to the internet. Guess what? Your phone is still tracking everything you do on that phone and it's still tracking your location."

As soon as you reconnect to the internet, all that information stored in your phone is sent to Google. So, even though you may think you've just spent the day incognito, the moment you reconnect, every step you've made is shared (provided you had your phone with you).

In terms of online tracking, it's also important to realize that Google is tracking your movements online even if you're not using their products, because most websites use Google Analytics, which tracks everything you do on that website. And, you have no way of knowing whether a website uses Google Analytics or not.

Steps to Protect Your Online Privacy

To protect your privacy, Epstein recommends taking the following steps, seven of which are outlined in "Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy." The last one, Fitbit, is a more recent concern.