Google Leaks

Google Leaks Plot Summary

Introduction

In the wake of Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016, something profound shifted in the corridors of Silicon Valley's tech giants. The election result that shocked much of America's coastal elites triggered a transformation within Google, one of the world's most influential companies. What began as a mission to organize the world's information evolved into an unprecedented effort to control it. Through internal meetings, algorithmic adjustments, and new programs like "Machine Learning Fairness," Google embarked on a journey that would fundamentally reshape how information reaches the public. This historical account takes readers behind closed doors at Google, revealing the company's internal response to political events and its gradual shift toward information control. Through leaked documents, recorded meetings, and firsthand accounts, we witness how executives and engineers worked to ensure "this wouldn't happen again" while redefining concepts like fairness and truth. The implications extend far beyond one company or one election, raising essential questions about democracy, free speech, and who ultimately decides what information we can access. This exploration is crucial for anyone concerned about the future of public discourse, the power of tech giants, and the very nature of truth in our digital society.

Chapter 1: The Ideological Shift: Google's Response to Trump's Victory (2016)

On November 8, 2016, as election results began favoring Donald Trump, an atmosphere of shock and dismay settled over Google's campuses. Engineers and executives who had been certain of Hillary Clinton's victory found themselves confronting an unexpected political reality. The emotional response was immediate and visceral - employees were seen crying in hallways, hugging each other for comfort, and expressing profound distress. This wasn't merely disappointment; for many at Google, it represented an existential threat to their values and worldview. The company's leadership quickly organized an all-hands meeting, formally called "TGIF" (Thank God It's Friday), despite being held on Thursday, November 17, 2016. In this remarkable gathering, captured on video, co-founder Sergey Brin opened by expressing how "deeply offensive" he found the election as an immigrant. Google CEO Sundar Pichai described it as "an extraordinarily stressful time for many," while Kent Walker, the company's legal chief, characterized Trump's victory as part of a troubling "rising tide of nationalism, populism, and concern" spanning the globe. CFO Ruth Porat, a self-described "longtime Hillary supporter," fought back tears as she recounted election night and emphasized the need to "never stop fighting for what's right." This watershed moment revealed an unmistakable ideological alignment within Google's leadership. Though they acknowledged that "we all got screwed over in 2016," executives framed the election not as a legitimate democratic outcome but as a problem requiring correction. As CFO Ruth Porat put it, they needed to "use the great strengths and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values." The meeting exemplified what critics would later describe as Silicon Valley's "bubble" - a homogeneous worldview so confident in its righteousness that opposing perspectives were viewed not as valid differences but as threats to overcome. The executives' language was particularly telling. They spoke of ensuring Google remained a place where people could "bring their whole self to work" while simultaneously characterizing Trump voters as people who "don't agree with our definition of fairness." The cognitive dissonance revealed a company struggling to reconcile its professed commitment to diversity with an apparent intolerance for political diversity. While HR director Eileen Naughton acknowledged that "diversity also means diversity of opinion and political persuasion," the overall tenor of the meeting suggested otherwise. This internal response to Trump's election would provide the foundation for Google's subsequent actions. What began as emotional processing evolved into concrete changes in how the company approached information, search results, and content moderation. The path from this meeting to the implementation of new algorithms and content policies reveals how personal political reactions can transform into institutional policies when wielded by those with unprecedented control over global information flows. The seeds of what some would later call a "silent revolution" in information control were planted in this emotional aftermath of the 2016 election. Rather than questioning why their predictions had failed or how they might better understand different American perspectives, Google's leadership embarked on a path to ensure such an electoral outcome would not happen again. The implications would reach far beyond one company, affecting how hundreds of millions of people worldwide would access information about politics, health, history, and countless other topics in the years to come.

Chapter 2: Building the Digital Ministry of Truth: Machine Learning Fairness

By early 2017, Google had moved beyond the emotional shock of Trump's election to implementing concrete technological solutions to what they perceived as an information problem. The company developed a new algorithmic framework called "Machine Learning Fairness" that would fundamentally alter how information was ranked, displayed, and prioritized across Google's products. This wasn't merely a technical adjustment but represented a philosophical shift in how the company approached its mission of organizing the world's information. The internal documents describing Machine Learning Fairness revealed Google's bold new direction. Fairness was redefined not as neutrality or accuracy, but through an ideological lens that prioritized certain outcomes over others. One striking example from these documents acknowledged that even if search results accurately reflected reality - such as showing predominantly male CEOs in image searches - this could still constitute "algorithmic unfairness" if it reinforced existing stereotypes. The solution wasn't merely to present reality but to adjust it toward what Google deemed "a more fair and equitable state." As one document stated, "Unconscious bias affects the way we collect and classify data, design, and write code," requiring intervention to correct these supposed biases. This new framework introduced what critics would call "information engineering" - the deliberate manipulation of search results, recommendations, and content visibility to promote certain viewpoints and suppress others. Engineers developed systems with names like "Super Root," "Bit Twiddler," and "Purple Rain" to detect and respond to trending news stories, particularly those related to political events. When implemented, these systems could effectively determine which information sources were considered authoritative and which were deemed untrustworthy, often with little transparency about the criteria being used. The implications were profound. Google's unprecedented scale meant these changes would affect billions of searches daily, subtly shaping public understanding of events, science, health, and politics worldwide. By establishing what internal documents called a "single point of truth" for definitions of news, Google positioned itself as an arbiter of reality rather than merely a navigator of information. Decisions made in conference rooms in Mountain View, California, would determine what perspectives billions of people could easily access - and which would be effectively invisible to most searchers. Perhaps most concerning was the internal language surrounding these changes. One presentation slide stated plainly, "People (like us) are programmed," viewing users not as autonomous individuals making their own judgments but as subjects whose perceptions could and should be molded. Another document outlined plans to "mitigate risk of low-quality sources and misinformation" through a combination of "algo-human content review" and an "updated inclusion" pipeline. What constituted "low-quality" or "misinformation" would be determined largely by Google itself. While presented as efforts to improve information quality, these systems enabled unprecedented control over public discourse. By 2018, engineers could manually trigger what was called "flight-to-quality" for certain search terms, effectively determining which voices would be heard during breaking news events. In practice, this meant that during periods of crisis or political importance, Google could ensure that established legacy media sources received priority placement while alternative perspectives became effectively invisible to most users - all without users realizing their information landscape was being actively curated. The "Machine Learning Fairness" initiative represented a digital ministry of truth operating largely without public awareness or consent. What began as an emotional response to Trump's victory had evolved into a sophisticated technological system capable of shaping public perception at scale. The question wasn't whether Google had the technical capability to influence how billions understood their world - but whether any private company should wield such power, especially one driven by a particular worldview determined to ensure certain electoral outcomes "wouldn't happen again."

Chapter 3: The Covfefe Deception: Manipulating Language and Narratives

On May 31, 2017, at 12:06 am, President Trump tweeted a seemingly nonsensical message: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe." The apparent typo immediately sparked internet conversations, jokes, and speculation. But behind the scenes at Google, this trivial moment revealed how far the company was willing to go to control narratives. When users began searching for the meaning of "covfefe," they discovered Google Translate identified it as an Arabic word meaning "I will stand up" or possibly "I will stand up to the fallen." This translation spread rapidly online, with some suggesting it was an intentional message rather than a typo. Google's internal response was swift and revealing. Documents show that within hours, engineers were tasked with creating what they called an "Easter egg" - a specialized override that would prevent Google Translate from showing any meaningful translation for "covfefe." One internal document stated their goal clearly: "Since the word has no real meaning, we want to do an Easter egg that translates 'covfefe' into a shrug emoticon." Notably, this task was assigned to a team called "[email protected]," named after Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher known for "deconstruction theory" - a framework for questioning established meanings and power structures in language. This seemingly minor incident illuminated a disturbing willingness to manipulate language and meaning. Google engineers weren't simply correcting a faulty translation; they were actively intervening to ensure a particular interpretation prevailed. By replacing a potential meaning with nonsense, they effectively determined what users could think about the president's message. The operation was completed within days, with engineers confirming the change had been "pushed out" and that "clearing the cache" would ensure no users would see the original translation. Just one week after the "covfefe" incident, mainstream media outlets began discussing the 25th Amendment as a potential means to remove Trump from office. The Washington Post published an article detailing how the vice president and cabinet could declare a president incapacitated, focusing particularly on scenarios involving mental inability. This timing raises questions about coordinated efforts to shape public perception of the president's mental state, with Google playing a role in controlling linguistic interpretations that might contradict preferred narratives. The manipulation extended beyond isolated incidents. In June 2017, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki outlined the company's approach to "fake news" at an all-hands meeting. "This sounds easy," she explained, "but it's really hard to do. We're pushing down the fake news. We're demoting it. And we're increasing the authoritative news and promoting it." She described systems that would identify what she called "trashy news" and "salacious clickbait content," while promoting what Google deemed "respectable sources." These decisions would be implemented through machine learning algorithms programmed to "understand and identify" problematic content. The implications were profound. Rather than serving as neutral platforms connecting users to information, Google and its subsidiaries were actively curating reality. They determined which information sources qualified as "authoritative," which narratives deserved promotion, and which perspectives should be suppressed - all while maintaining the illusion that users were receiving objective search results based solely on relevance and popularity. This represented a fundamental shift from Google's original mission to organize information to a new mission of controlling information. Perhaps most concerning was how these interventions remained largely invisible to users. The average person searching for information had no way of knowing that results had been algorithmically curated to promote certain viewpoints and suppress others. What appeared to be the natural information landscape was increasingly an engineered environment designed to shape public perception in ways aligned with Google's internal values and political preferences. From seemingly trivial moments like "covfefe" to major political events, the company had positioned itself as the arbiter of acceptable language, meaning, and narrative.

Chapter 4: Blacklists and Shadowbans: The Las Vegas Massacre Cover-up

On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring over 800 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The tragedy shocked the nation, but what happened in its aftermath revealed Google's information control apparatus operating at full capacity. Internal documents showed that Google implemented an unprecedented blacklisting operation to control the narrative around the shooting, with nearly 50% of YouTube's controversial query blacklist dedicated to Las Vegas massacre-related terms. The internal blacklist, titled "YoutubeControversialTwiddler Query Blacklist," contained hundreds of search terms related to the shooting that would be suppressed in YouTube's search results. Terms like "Stephen Paddock," "Las Vegas shooting," "Mandalay Bay attack," and countless variations were systematically removed from normal search functionality. Most notably, any search combinations that included terms like "multiple shooters," "false flag," or "crisis actor" were heavily censored, regardless of the content's factual accuracy or journalistic merit. This wasn't simply removing conspiracy theories; it was a wholesale suppression of alternative perspectives and investigative questions. What made this blacklisting operation particularly disturbing was its scale and specificity. While certain fringe theories certainly circulated, Google's response went far beyond targeting misinformation. Legitimate questions about security response times, hotel security protocols, and official timeline discrepancies were similarly suppressed. The blacklist even included terms like "Las Vegas survivors" and "Las Vegas witnesses," effectively limiting public access to firsthand accounts that might contradict official narratives. The company's "Purple Rain" crisis response system, described in internal documents, had been activated to "manually trigger flight-to-quality in Search" for queries related to Las Vegas. The Las Vegas blacklisting was part of a broader pattern. The same documents revealed that Google maintained numerous other blacklists, including a "Google_now_black_list.txt" that targeted specific news websites across the political spectrum. Sites like The Gateway Pundit, True Pundit, Glenn Beck, and even some left-leaning websites that questioned official narratives found themselves systematically downranked or removed from search results. The justification in internal documents was to protect users from "low-quality sources and misinformation" - with Google alone determining what qualified as "quality" information. Perhaps most revealing was Google's approach to medical and scientific information. The blacklist documents showed terms like "cancer cure" and "cure cancer" were systematically suppressed, along with numerous health-related queries that might lead users to alternative or natural health information. Even politically sensitive topics like "The 8th Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland" (related to abortion legislation) were blacklisted during crucial political moments. This demonstrated that Google's information control extended far beyond politics into areas of health, science, and social policy. The implications of these blacklists were profound. While presented as efforts to combat misinformation, they effectively established Google as the arbiter of acceptable questions and perspectives across virtually every domain of human knowledge. Users searching for information had no way of knowing that their queries were being filtered through ideological screens designed to promote certain viewpoints while making others functionally invisible. The Las Vegas massacre blacklisting operation represented not just content moderation but reality curation - determining which aspects of a major national tragedy the public could easily discover and discuss. By late 2017, the combination of algorithmic manipulation and explicit blacklisting had transformed Google from an information navigator into an information gatekeeper. The company had established a system capable of rapidly suppressing dissenting views during breaking news events, directing users to "authoritative" sources that often aligned with official narratives, and effectively removing from public discourse perspectives deemed problematic by internal teams. This wasn't merely prioritization of quality; it was the active engineering of public perception on a scale unprecedented in human history.

Chapter 5: Whistleblowing and Resistance: Facing Google's Retaliation

By early 2018, Zach Vorhies had worked at Google for over eight years, rising to the position of senior software engineer. As he witnessed the company's transformation from an information organizer to an information controller, he faced a profound moral dilemma. The internal documents he had access to painted a disturbing picture of systematic manipulation designed to shape public perception and political outcomes. After months of internal struggle, he made the momentous decision to collect evidence and become a whistleblower, knowing the potentially devastating personal and professional consequences. Over several months, Vorhies gathered approximately 950 pages of internal documents detailing Google's censorship infrastructure. These included blacklists, algorithmic manipulations, and policy documents that contradicted the company's public statements about political neutrality. The evidence revealed not just isolated incidents but an interconnected system designed for information control across Google's products. When he attempted to raise concerns internally about the censorship of scientific topics like cold fusion research, he found himself stonewalled and later suspected of being monitored by company security. In June 2019, Vorhies took his evidence to Project Veritas, an investigative journalism organization. When the first report was published featuring an anonymous whistleblower (Vorhies had initially concealed his identity), Google's response was swift and severe. Despite having officially resigned from the company weeks earlier, Vorhies received an urgent letter from Google's attorneys demanding the return of company property and threatening legal action. More ominously, Google called the San Francisco Police Department to perform a "wellness check" on him - a tactic that resulted in a full tactical police response with snipers positioned on nearby rooftops. The police confrontation on August 5, 2019, marked a turning point. As Vorhies emerged from his apartment with his hands raised, he faced multiple officers with weapons drawn. "I'm blowing the whistle on Google's illegal activity," he told the officers while being detained. After confirming he posed no threat, the police released him - but the message from his former employer was clear. This wasn't simply about protecting company secrets; it was about silencing a challenge to Google's information control apparatus. Rather than being intimidated into silence, Vorhies decided to publicly reveal his identity. On August 14, 2019, he appeared in a Project Veritas video, stating: "I've been collecting the documents for over a year so that I could take it, expose it to the public, take it to Congress, take it to the Justice Department and show them that Google is not who they claim to be." The full document dump revealed Google's blacklists, political manipulation efforts, and internal discussions about preventing "another Trump situation" in 2020. The price of whistleblowing was severe. Vorhies faced potential legal action, career destruction in the tech industry, and personal safety concerns. Former colleagues shunned him, while some tech journalists attempted to discredit his revelations despite the clear documentary evidence. Yet his disclosures sparked congressional inquiries, Department of Justice investigations, and public debates about Big Tech's power over information. For Vorhies, the personal cost was justified: "For three years, since 2016, when they started changing everything, and to have that burden lifted off my soul, I've never felt happier or more at peace with myself than I have right now." Vorhies wasn't alone in challenging Google's practices. Other employees had raised concerns about political bias and censorship, though most did so anonymously fearing retaliation. Kevin Cernekee, another Google engineer who had objected to what he saw as anti-conservative bias, was fired in 2018 and later claimed the company maintained internal blacklists of employees with dissenting political views. The pattern suggested a company increasingly intolerant of internal criticism regarding its information control mechanisms. The whistleblowing revelations forced a broader public conversation about the nature of Big Tech power. Congressional hearings, legal challenges, and media investigations followed, though Google consistently denied political bias while acknowledging it used various ranking systems to promote "authoritative" content. The company's responses focused on fighting "misinformation" rather than addressing the central concern: that a small group of Silicon Valley engineers and executives had established themselves as the arbiters of acceptable information for billions of people worldwide.

Chapter 6: Digital Battlefield: The Fight for Information Freedom

By 2020, the battle over information control had escalated into a full-scale digital war. Google's censorship infrastructure, now fully operational, was being deployed across virtually every controversial topic - from politics and elections to health issues like COVID-19 and vaccines. The systems revealed by whistleblowers had evolved into sophisticated tools capable of real-time narrative management during breaking news events. What began as a response to Trump's election had transformed into a comprehensive information control apparatus spanning multiple platforms and touching billions of lives daily. The censorship went far beyond Google. Other tech giants including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon implemented similar systems, often coordinating their actions against specific individuals, websites, or topics. In October 2020, YouTube conducted what critics called "the purge" - removing countless channels and content creators who questioned dominant narratives or presented alternative perspectives. The timing, just weeks before the presidential election, raised serious questions about Big Tech's role in shaping political discourse and electoral outcomes. The justifications for this censorship consistently cited "misinformation" and "public safety," but the definition of these terms seemed increasingly political. When the New York Post published a story about Hunter Biden's laptop containing potentially compromising information just weeks before the 2020 election, Twitter blocked the story entirely and suspended the newspaper's account. Facebook reduced the story's distribution based on "fact-checking" that hadn't yet occurred. Later investigations would confirm the laptop's authenticity, raising troubling questions about election interference under the guise of fighting "misinformation." This censorship infrastructure extended far beyond politics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Google actively suppressed information about potential treatments, vaccine concerns, and alternative perspectives from credentialed scientists and doctors who questioned official narratives. The EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) system developed by Google was used to elevate establishment sources while downranking alternative health sites - some of which saw traffic plummet by over 70%. Even sites focused on nutrition, natural supplements, or holistic approaches found themselves effectively erased from search results. The response to this information control came from multiple fronts. Legal challenges mounted, with antitrust investigations launched by the Department of Justice and numerous state attorneys general. In October 2020, the DOJ filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google, describing it as a "monopoly gatekeeper for the internet" that had used anticompetitive tactics to maintain its dominance. Congressional hearings featured tech CEOs being questioned about their censorship practices, though they consistently denied political bias while defending their right to moderate content. Alternative platforms emerged to challenge the information monopolies. Video platforms like Rumble and Bitchute, social networks like Parler and Gab, and search engines like DuckDuckGo gained users seeking less censored information environments. However, these alternatives faced significant challenges - from infrastructure denial when Amazon Web Services removed Parler following the January 6, 2021 Capitol events, to coordinated media campaigns labeling them as "havens for extremism." The digital battlefield was not a level playing field, with dominant tech platforms using their control over infrastructure to limit competition. The struggle for information freedom increasingly transcended traditional political boundaries. Civil libertarians from both left and right recognized the danger of allowing private corporations to control the boundaries of acceptable discourse. Dr. Robert Epstein, a liberal psychologist who had supported Hillary Clinton, became one of the most vocal critics of Google's influence on elections. His research suggested that search engine manipulation could shift between 2.6 and 15 million votes in the 2020 election - without voters realizing their perceptions were being manipulated. As Epstein noted in congressional testimony, "The power to determine what we see and don't see has never before been concentrated in the hands of a few companies." By 2021, it had become clear that the digital battlefield was ultimately about competing visions of society. One vision embraced centralized control by "experts" who would determine what information was safe for public consumption. The other advocated for information freedom, where individuals could access diverse perspectives and reach their own conclusions. The stakes couldn't be higher - what was being decided was not simply how search engines ranked results, but who would ultimately control reality itself in the digital age. As one whistleblower put it, "This isn't about left versus right. It's about whether we want to live in a world where a handful of unelected tech executives determine what's true."

Summary

Throughout this historical account, we've traced how Google evolved from a mission of organizing information to actively controlling it. This transformation represents a profound shift in the relationship between technology companies and democracy itself. The core tension that emerges is between two competing visions: one where information gatekeepers determine what perspectives and facts can reach the public, and another where citizens have access to diverse viewpoints and form their own conclusions. This silent revolution didn't arrive with fanfare or declaration, but through gradual algorithmic adjustments, internal policy changes, and increasingly sophisticated systems of information control. The lessons from Google's journey offer crucial insights for our digital future. First, technology is never neutral - the values and beliefs of those who build and control information systems inevitably shape how those systems function. Second, transparency is essential to accountability; many of Google's most consequential decisions about information access were made behind closed doors without public awareness or consent. Finally, information freedom requires vigilance and active protection. As we navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, we must recognize that the ability to access diverse perspectives and inconvenient truths is fundamental to both personal autonomy and democratic governance. The fight for information freedom isn't simply about technology or politics - it's about preserving our capacity to think freely and determine our own reality in an age of unprecedented information control.

About Author

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Kent Heckenlively

When I was fourteen years old I submitted my first story to ANALOG magazine, devoted to short science fiction stories. My story did not get accepted, but I did get a gentle rejection letter which told me to keep writing. In college I wrote my first novel, spent many years writing screenplays, and eventually ran across a story I thought I could turn into a non-fiction story. That was PLAGUE, co-authored with Dr. Judy Mikovits.In between writing, I worked a summer for a United States Senator, spent two summers chasing bad guys at the United States Attorney's Office, and spent six weeks in a virus lab where I worked with Ebola.In college I was a double major in English and Political Science, served as Head of our Model United Nations team, and was our school's Rhodes Scholar Candidate. In law school I was a writer and editor for law review, and also won top honors in our Mock Trial class.I worked as a lawyer with my dad for several years, then found myself drawn to my original love of science and became a science teacher. Now I get to teach science during the day and write about it at night.

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