Does Google ever learn?

The Daily Caller reports that Google has taken to throwing shade almost exclusively on conservative websites through its search engine mechanism, using a sort of "fact-checking" system to discredit certain news-providers so no one will want to click on them.  Kind of an odd thing for a search engine company to do, given that its business is built around gaining clicks.  But it's not the first time the Silicon Valley giant has been accused of disguised censorship against conservative news outlets under the guise of the war on fake news.

According to the Daily Caller:

And not only is Google's fact-checking highly partisan – perhaps reflecting the sentiments of its leaders – it is also blatantly wrong, asserting [that] sites made "claims" they demonstrably never made.

When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a section titled "Reviewed Claims."

Vox, and other left-wing outlets and blogs like Gizmodo, are not given the same fact-check treatment.

The Daily Caller has a photo on its story of what it is talking about, here.

It seems downright suicidal for the company to be doing this, given that it's been caught repeatedly under this kind of fire, there's a hostile Republican Congress out there, and there's lots of talk of breaking up the monolith under anti-trust laws.

In any case, something is funny with the company, given that Fox News's Tucker Carlson just interviewed fired Google engineer James Damore, who described the scope of the problem.

He elaborated on the threat:

I had a look myself at the supposed phenomenon described by the Caller...and found nothing there.  I stripped off my name from the Google search to make sure the system wasn't manipulating results...and still, on doing a search of Daily Caller and other conservative sites, I found nothing there.  I tried nutbag sites such as Occupy Democrats and Daily Stormer and still found nothing there.  Here is what my search for American Thinker looks like:

I doubt that the Daily Caller's reportage was wrong in this case.  What may have happened is that Google's bigs got wind of the Daily Caller's story and ordered the staff leftists to cut it out immediately, ending the dubious practice of "fact-checking" and the disguised censorship that practice can and has become.  Or there may be other versions of Google in other parts of the country or out there by other criteria that I can't see.

One thing is certain: the culture wars are blazing hot at Google, oblivious to how it cuts into business and draws the attention of angry legislators.  And yet that doesn't stop some of them.  All the same, there are likely top people who know what the stakes are and know that Silicon Valley is unpopular with both right and left.  There wouldn't even be any leftists to defend them if there were consequences to this kind of censorship.

So maybe they learned...