Political Backlash Grows Over Google's Pressure To Censor "Independent" Think Tank

It was only a matter of time until this happened...

For years now, the politicos of the Left have embraced a perfectly symbiotic relationship with the "progressive" leaders of Silicon Valley.  Tech titans, like Google"s Eric Schmidt who got very cozy with the Hillary Clinton campaign, have poured million of dollars of their tech fortunes into Democratic coffers all while colluding with elected officials, "independent" think tanks and "institutions of higher indoctrination" to ram their progressive agenda down the throats of the American public. 

It was a great relationship for Democrats because Silicon Valley"s elites had all the money of Wall Street without the negative stigma...until now.

Google"s recent problems with censorship, which came first in the firing of James Damore and was quickly followed up by the firing of an "independent" research team at a think tank funded by Google, has exposed what many have known for some time but others were too enamored to see, namely that Silicon Valley companies like Google are every bit as motivated by their relentless pursuit of power and wealth as Wall Street...they"re just better at wrapping their motivations in a nice progressive bow.

Unfortunately, the cat is now out of the bag and it has forced a growing number of the Left"s most progressive politicians to distance themselves from America"s new breed of "evil corporations."  As The Hill notes this morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Keith Ellison have already started to distance themselves:

Google is facing blowback after one of its most prominent critics was fired from a think tank funded by the tech giant.

The incident is raising new questions about Google’s influence over think tanks and academic research.

The controversy has caught the attention of lawmakers, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) calling the firing “troubling” and warning academic institutions not to compromise their work for financial backers.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) also tweeted his support for the researchers pushed out of the think tank.

Open Markets does terrific work on monopoly power and inequality. Excited for their new chapter!https://t.co/5nTuUjjchK

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) August 31, 2017

Of course, as we pointed out last week, this latest backlash against Google comes after Barry Lynn, formerly a top researcher at New America, was fired after publishing a paper praising European Union antitrust regulators for fining Google nearly $3 billion for purportedly rigging its search algorithm to favor its own services over its rivals.

According to the New York Times, the New America Foundation has received more than $21 million in funding from Google, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt and his family’s foundation since the think tank was first established in 1999. The money helped establish New America as an “elite voice” in policy debates on the American left.

“But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had been chairman of New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.”

Slaughter, a close ally of the Clintons who’s best known for her 2012 Atlantic Cover Story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” quickly caved.

The statement disappeared from new America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure quickly rippled  through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington officers where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab. The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.”

Not surprisingly, Google has somehow managed to continue arguing with a straight face that they fund "independent research" with "undue influence."  Of course, as Matt Bruenig, a former researcher at the liberal think tank Demos points out, "undue influence" isn"t actually required if their is an implicit understanding with donors that results in "self-censorship."

Google insists they fund think tanks independent of their corporate interests.

“We support hundreds of organizations that promote a free and open Internet, greater access to information, and increased opportunity,” Google spokesperson Riva Sciuto said in an emailed statement to The Hill.

“We don"t agree with every group 100% of the time, and while we sometimes respectfully disagree, we respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions, and policy perspectives.”

Google is not alone in the tech industry or in American business. Corporations pump large amounts of money into various research groups across different fields. Like Google, they say the research is conducted without undue influence.

Critics remain skeptical.

“Google spends a lot but says it’s not to influence research, which makes you think they waste a lot of money funding groups,” says Stoller.

"The influence operates on a self censorship level,” says Matt Bruenig a former researcher at the liberal think tank Demos, and founder at the People’s Policy Project, a crowdfunded think tank.

“If you’re an employee you understand the contours of what you should be writing, what you shouldn"t be writing based on what the donors are doing.”

Meanwhile, for anyone who has been paying attention, Yelp"s VP of public policy summed up the recent Google controversies the best:

“I"ve been working on Google antitrust for 6 years. This is both the most shocking & least surprising thing I"ve read."

"People Are So Afraid Of Google Now": Here's Why

Google, pardon Alphabet’s efforts to influence the American political discourse (not to mention presidential election outcome) stretch far beyond the company’s penchant for subtly disadvantaging independent and conservative thinkers on platforms like YouTube. By financially supporting left-leaning policy shops, Google’s parent company has helped raise a liberal army intent on hashing out policy minutiae to help bend US policy to their benefactors’ advantage.

But what happens when these supposedly “independent” think tanks publish something that displeases their corporate master? As one researcher at the left-leaning New America think tank learned, the punishment is swift and severe.

Barry Lynn, formerly a top researcher at New America, learned that lesson the hard way after publishing a paper praising European Union antitrust regulators for fining Google nearly $3 billion for purportedly rigging its search algorithm to favor its own services over its rivals.

According to the New York Times, the New America Foundation has received more than $21 million in funding from Google, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt and his family’s foundation since the think tank was first established in 1999. The money helped establish New America as an “elite voice” in policy debates on the American left.

“But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had been chairman of New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.”

Slaughter, a close ally of the Clintons who’s best known for her 2012 Atlantic Cover Story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” quickly caved.

The statement disappeared from new America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure quickly rippled  through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington officers where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab. The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.”

The answer to that last question, as employees of New America quickly learned, is, obviously, no, it can"t. A few days after the incident Slaughter summoned to Lynn to her office, where she summarily dismissed him – along with 10 of his underlings.

“Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Ms. Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a large corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Mr. Schmidt serves as executive charman.

Ms. Slaughter told Mr. Lynn that ‘the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,’ according to emails from Ms. Slaughter to Mr. Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team – nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows – would be exiled from New America."

While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was ‘in no way based on the content of your work,’ Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of ‘imperiling the institution as a whole.’”

Lynn, who eventually shared his story with the NYT, blasted Google’s aggressive tactics, which the company has denied through its communications machine.

And the punchline, which also serves as the title for this post: "Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings.” said Lynn. “People are so afraid of Google now.”

In a series of statements published on Twitter, Slaughter and New America slammed the NYT’s story as “absolutely false.”

Let me be clearer in era of fake news; facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong. https://t.co/ynlNR8FDEx

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) August 30, 2017

New America"s Response to the New York Times: https://t.co/JGmSk1oldY pic.twitter.com/VS6DJTKVIH

— New America (@NewAmerica) August 30, 2017

In a separate email sent last year, Slaughter castigated Lynn for organizing a conference where he intended to criticize tech companies’ hegemonic influence.

“We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to ‘just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.’”  

Slaughter is now reportedly helping the Open Markets team secure financing for a new, separate nonprofit entity. However, no money will be forthcoming from Google.

Google spent more than $9.5 million on lobbying during the first half of 2017, more than almost any other company. It has helped organize conferences at which key regulators overseeing investigations into the company were presented with pro-Google arguments, sometimes without disclosure of Google’s role in funding NA, according to the NYT.

The company has also donated to more than 170 groups from across the political spectrum, according to voluntary disclosures on its website.

What was that about “don’t be evil”?