A new document leaked Tuesday appears to show a Google engineer suggesting in an internal email that classifying prominent conservatives as “Nazis” could help the company wipe out far-right content.
“Today it is often 1 or 2 steps to Nazis, if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are Nazis using the dog whistles you mention in step 1,” Liam Hopkins, a machine learning recruiter at Google, said in the email, which was obtained by Project Veritas (PV).
The Daily Caller News Foundation was able to confirm Hopkins’s role as a data scientist at the company but was unable verify if he is part of Google’s transparency-and-ethics group, as PV claims. “I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities,” he said, adding: Why not … disable “the suggestion feature.”
FILE PHOTO: A “No Trespassing” sign is seen in the Port Lands, where Alphabet Inc, the owner of Google, is expected to develop an area of Toronto’s waterfront after they announced the project “Sidewalk Toronto”, using new technologies to develop high-tech urban areas in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mark Blinch/File Photo
The leak comes after PV published a report Monday showing an undercover video of longtime Google executive Jen Gennai suggesting that breaking up the Silicon Valley giant would affect big tech’s ability to prevent the “next Trump situation.” (RELATED: Google Exec Says Breaking Up Big Tech Will Not Prevent ‘The Next Trump Situation’)
Gennai said in a Medium post Monday night that she was referring to ways the company can wipe out misinformation online. “I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016,” she said.
A full, unedited, version of the video has not yet been released. Google has not responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.