[solidasparagus]

The entire basis of his testimony is his personal credibility. He literally only references his own research and the core evidence he relies on is his research findings. Some of which looks questionable to my not-very-knowledgeable eyes, so it's very useful to know about Epstein's past relationship with Google.

Lines that stand out are:

- "Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015"

- "In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google’s search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of the 113 million people who voted in the election)

- "Google’s “Go Vote” prompt was not a public service; it was a vote manipulation"

- "To let Big Tech companies get away with invisible manipulation on this scale would be to abandon the free-and-fair election. It would make democracy meaningless, even if your chosen candidate prevailed."

[slg]

>"In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google’s search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of the 113 million people who voted in the election)

You are misinterpreting what he is saying there. That same thing tripped me up too on first glance because the 78.2 million number seemed ridiculously high. He is referring to votes and not people who voted. If there were 10 items on your ballet and he thinks Google may have influence you, he is counting that as 10 votes and not 1 person voting. There is nothing technically wrong with displaying the number that way, but it seems so misleading that it makes me question if it was intentionally chosen to make the problem sound worse. It is decisions like that which make me doubt his neutrality in presenting the data.

[solidasparagus]

You're right, thanks for clarifying.

I agree - it doesn't feel like the most honest way to represent that data and I doubt that subtlety came through in his testimony for congress.