Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has reacted to Google suppressing, in Google Search, the link to the Rumble exclusive GOP debate live stream, as an example of the giant’s ability and willingness to suppress dissent and control what narratives get promoted.
In conversation with Russell Brand, Pavlovski noted that Google had positioned itself (and gained massive search market share thanks to that) as a service that provides unbiased and relevant results, but that at this point, this is no more than “the bag of goods that they sold us.”
In other words, even if Google started out, and became extraordinarily popular, thanks to organic search – those days are long gone.
Still, seeing products and movies promoted to the top of the page instead of the most relevant to the query result is one thing, but it’s a very different problem when this powerful search engine that the huge majority of users in the Western world regularly turn to, starts “hiding” links to political content.
Pavlovski mentioned the GOP debate which was exclusively streamed on Rumble, that is, Rumble was the only place to watch it live – and yet, when people searched for this in the hope of seeing the link to the page, it did not come up as the top result.
He said that instead, Google “put” (that is, programmed its algorithms to this end) “some corporate media entity” as the top result, even though it clearly didn’t have the live stream exclusively.
Pavlovski then wondered, “Is that not election interference?”
He went on to explain that this is one way to describe actively suppressing political content from voters and content that concerns one of the two US parties with by far the most clout (and who eventually produce presidents).
Pavlovski also touched on other consequences of the “rigged search” – namely, that it almost to a fault favors Google products (YouTube videos, Google Maps to show locations, etc.) in this way creating “a mouse trap” for its users. And, as critics – Rumble included – keep repeating, seriously undermining competition.
“And that’s one of the reasons why we have a lawsuit against them. It’s very difficult for you to go and search something that’s relevant and find Rumble near the top,” he said.
Brand observed that YouTube (Google) is a powerful entity that has in a sense become a “curator of reality” – “you only see certain stories, you only have access to certain ideas.”
