Breitbart: A "Senior Software Engineer" With Influence Over Search-Results Ranking Defends Censorship Against Conservatives, Calls Rep. Marsha Blackburn a "Terrorist" and "Thug" Whose Ads Are "Libel"

Private companies monopolies can do whatever they want.

A senior software engineer at Google with responsibility for a key feature of Google's search engine labeled Tennessee Senate candidate Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) a "violent thug" and a "terrorist," who Google shouldn't "negotiate" with, according to internal emails obtained by Breitbart News. The employee also defended the censorship of her campaign ads on social media.

The comments took place in an internal email discussion that began on June 19 this year. The topic of discussion was Rep. Blackburn's Fox News op-ed of the same month, which urged Silicon Valley companies to address bias against conservatives on their platforms. Blackburn, who has herself been the target of social media censorship, has been a vocal critic of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter during her time in Congress.

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Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google, was harsher in his comments. Saying the public is being "lied to" by Blackburn, he went on to accuse the Tennessee representative of "causing the deaths of people she claimed to protect" -- something he attributed to her work on the anti-trafficking bills FOSTA and SESTA.

Those bills impacted the tech industry by making tech companies liable for ads they ran that might be part of a sex-trafficking enterprise. There is a lot of debate about whether they hurt or help. Basically, the argument made by the sexual left and libertarians is that by cracking down on online advertisement for prostitution services, you force prostitutes out on the streets, which is more dangerous.

This is a big complaint in the trans-"sex worker" community.

But it's interesting to see Google branding a political disagreement about utilitarian outcomes "terrorism."

"We certainly shouldn’t acquiesce to the theatrical demands of a legislator who makes political hay by intentionally reducing the safety of the people who she claims to protect," said Lemoine. "I'm not big on negotiation with terrorists."

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Lemoine is named in this story because he occupies a key position in the company's influential search team, as a technical lead on Google's search feed, formerly known as Google Now. The Google feed's most distinctive feature is that it sends information to users proactively, using personal data to predict what information users want before they search for it.

According to Lemoine's LinkedIn, he also works on "research pertaining to fairness and bias in machine learning," making his own biased comments particularly relevant.

He also defended Twitter's banning of Blackburn's ads.

Breitbart.com notes, coincidentally enough, that Blackburn just happens to be locked in a highly competitive Senate race with Democrat Phil Bresden.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:13 PM

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