US Representative for Texas and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw has ripped into Google after watchdog group Project Veritas reported that the company's employees had branded conservative political commentators Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager as "Nazis".
"Two of three of these people are Jewish, very religious Jews, and yet you think they're Nazis. It begs the questions: What kind of education do people at Google have so they think that religious Jews are Nazis? [..] It's pretty disturbing. Do you believe in hate speech? How do you define that? Can you give me a quick definition right now? Is it written down somewhere at Google?" Crenshaw asked a Google executive during a House hearing.
Crenshaw continued by saying that since there's this "common thread in this country that [Nazis] are bad and that they're evil and that they should be destroyed" then if Big Tech calls people Nazis "you can make the argument that's inciting violence".
Project Veritas claimed earlier this week that it had obtained a leaked email from within Google's "transparency and ethics" team, where an alleged employee, Liam Hopkins, wrote: "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..."
Hopkins then appears to be discussing a feature that recommends more videos to watch on the Google-owned video-sharing platform, YouTube.
"I can receive these recommendations regardless of the content of what I’m looking at, and I have recorded thousands of internet users sharing the same experience. I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestions feature? This could be a significant step in terms of user trust", Hopkins continued.
Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist, turned to sarcasm while reacting to the news via Twitter...
...Ben Shapiro wasn't that amused and called out YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on the micro-blogging platform, saying that he "would love to discuss" the embarrassing situation with her:
PragerU, a US non-profit founded by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager, took to Twitter as well to ridicule the use of the word "Nazi" for two Jews - Shapiro and Prager - who have repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
YouTube, meanwhile, has issued a statement to "clarify" that it applies its policies "fairly and without political bias", and "all creators are held to the same standard".
Over the past few weeks, Google and YouTube have faced multiple accusations of political bias against conservative views and independent media sites, as well as suppression of free speech following the adoption of new "anti-hate speech" guidelines.
The platforms have suspended various content creators, conservative commentators, and even educational channels in line with its policy, which block videos "alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status". The tech giants have, however, denied the allegations of political bias against conservatives.