A research conducted by Psychology researcher Dr. Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology says that Google manipulated the 2018 US Midterm elections in such a way that its search engine algorithms helped in influencing the decision of over 78 million votes to go in favor of Democrats.
Epstein argues that three seats from California which were in favor of Republicans were hand over to Dems as Google played a vital role in flipping those seats towards Democrats by influencing millions of undecided voters by controlling/influencing their minds by manipulating 500 election-related keywords.
When the same search terms were looked on Bing and Yahoo, different results appeared. And when the same terms were searched on Google- which constitutes 90% of market share in the US, the search results were biased and enormously influenced.
“The search engine results were biased and were in favor of Democrats,” said Robert in a statement released to the media. Epstein who has received a Ph.D. in psychology said that his research methodology was perfect and meticulous.
“People trust algorithmic results and trust Google when it comes to digital search as they think that the results are generated by Computer will never have a human indulgence. However, this is not the case in reality as most of the results are now being offered impartially and are highly objectified”, says Dr. Robert.
Meanwhile, Google has denied the manipulation of its search results during the 2018 midterm elections and said that it doesn’t play with the political sentiments of its users by making election specific tweaks.
Note- Dr. Robert is a guy who spent almost 6 years in investigating the role of Google search algorithms in influencing web traffic- Search Engine Manipulation Effect(SEME).
