Google is famous for its difficult and mind-bending job interview questions. So here’s one: you’re applying to be a Search Engineer in their Washington DC office, working on the global team tasked with political data search results -- now here’s the two-part question.
Q: I) What are some ways you might fix an election in Google’s favor? II) How would you quantify, in dollars, the value of such fixing?
A: I) See image above. It’s already been carefully worked out and is live in Google’s search results for the US Dem primaries of 2016. We bury in the same bar graph the actually-won pledged delegates based on caucus or popular vote, along with not-yet-voted superdelegates in different shades of blue — BUT only display the total numbers, yet represent them all as past-tense “Delegates won”. II) Trading on Google’s authority as an impartial information resource to lend greater credibility to the one-clear-frontrunner story, thereby validating many other media outlets in following suit, could be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Since this type of disinformation has never been sold on the open market before, we will not know until the post-primary analysis comes in, and only then can quantify the degree to which the perpetuation of the story of Cinton as the “clear frontrunner” despite running neck-and-neck in national polling, and within 5% of Sanders in total actually-pledged delegates and the popular vote .
This Q&A is my invention, and is perhaps only a bit facetious. I had already noticed and determined to keep watching Google’s suspicious data visualization design a few weeks ago when I first went looking for the raw data on delegate counts, and had a hard time locating anyone who was authoritatively compiling it. From the start, it really surprised me Google wasn’t providing the data in a clean way—even after just Iowa and New Hampshire, Google was representing this race as all but over. I let it rest a while when I finally found the Washington Post’s team was at least separating “ current” from “potential” delegates, as in the image below.
It was all just more spin in the spin machine, but then I came across a preview of respected psychologist Robert Epstein’s forthcoming book entitled The New Mind Control, a portion of which he beautifully essays in this article on Aeon. Entitled “How the Internet Flips Elections and Alters Our Thoughts”, he shares research on how new media companies like Google and Facebook can impact electoral politics. Anyone would benefit from giving it a read.
Epstein helped me see how obvious it is that whoever the team was at Google who conceived, programmed, reviewed, and approved this widget must have known there is a big lie inherent in this visualization, and that is the lie the entire mass media establishment is propagating still—that Clinton’s delegate lead is all-but-insurmountable due to her superdelegates.
Though Google’s widget is innocently titled “Delegates won”, it buries in the grey small print the fact that “Delegate results aren’t final until the convention in July”, and Google completely hides the delegate count based on completed votes, the actual delegates won so far. It also ignores the fact that at this same point in the 2008 election, superdelegates were similarly pledged largely to Clinton, but flipped when the popular will became clear for Obama. The truth is that, as of March 8 at 11:02 PM, those superdelegates counted in Clinton’s column are anything but (past-tense) “won”.
This is disinformation of the worst sort. Google, above all, is an information company--who we as a species have come to trust to be reasonably fair and accurate about data like currency conversion, stock prices, YouTube views and the like. If you go to any of those apps on Google’s network of sites, you’ll see the actual data, clearly displayed. It’s perhaps forgivable for an overworked journalistic intern at a small local newspaper to misunderstand or just to keep her job, follow the lead of other major media outlets in counting superdelegates (not to be cast or counted until July) in the WON column already in March.
To me, it’s UNFORGIVABLE for the world’s leading information search company whose data represents the closest to ‘de facto reality' most of us can get to misrepresent the data this way.
So I have a message for you, everyone’s dear ubiquitous search giant.
Yes, Google, you already have the right to pay lobbyists in unlimited amounts to attempt to influence legislation.
Yes, Google, you already have the right to make cash contributions directly to a particular campaign up to allowed individual limits.
Yes, Google, you have the right to make secret, unlimited cash contributions to super PACs thanks to Citizens United.
BUT NO, Google, you DO NOT have the right to openly propagate disinformation ostensibly worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to the candidates of your choosing and spin the outcomes of elections. Your lawyers of course will argue you do, but we your customers, assure you that you do NOT.
Google, your motto was once “Don’t be evil” but you recently threw this out in favor of the perhaps more direct, “Do the right thing”.
Either way, it appears your engineers have lost touch. Time to dust off your values, and tweak your code to track the actual reality, not a wished-for one.
___________________
Finally, I’ll just note this is the tip of an iceberg of possibility of tech giants abusing their enormous ontological power to manipulate our sociopolitical axiology. By being able to control what categories relate to each other and how they do—like defining what counts as a “won” delegate in a primary? and thereby who is portrayed as a frontrunner?—they can alter our sense of what is valuable and real in very fundamental and potentially deeply dangerous ways. This is notably dramatized in Netflix’s fourth season of House of Cards, which dropped this past Friday, and has a major subplot involving a search giant funneling data to a particular campaign.
It’s not just in the land of fiction that search giants choices can have existential consequences.
It’s also the US in 2016.
So let’s keep our eyes peeled and hold these companies to account. ___
ADDENDUM: Complete this one-question poll to let any Googlers reading know this your view too.
Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 · 7:04:08 AM +00:00 · vikramsurya
In 2008 Obama went from approximately 5% of superdelegates before Iowa to 51% or so by the end of the campaign, while Clinton went from 35% or so to just 45%. According to the tally on Wikipedia, which interestingly is the best one I found out there — this year, of the 717 Dem “unpledged superdelegates”, who can vote for whoever they wish, 460 are presently counted for Clinton, but 257 are counted for Sanders, or uncommitted.
At 460 superdelegates, just 51 of Clinton’s superdelegates have to flip for her count to be at 358, and lose the superdelegate majority of the 717. Already, DNC Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard among other party leaders have flipped, and it’s early on yet — 30 states left to go.