The great powers of Big Tech appear to be converging to take out one embattled senator.
If you Google nearly anything about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, you will find that the news results are overwhelmingly neutral or negative. Positive stories are few and far between.
This comes as Google, Facebook, and other tech companies have had their financial interests threatened by some proposed policies from the bankruptcy law professor-turned-politician. Warren famously advocated for “break[ing] up big tech” during her 2020 presidential bid and specifically singled out companies like Google and Facebook.
This was hardly the last time she would make this argument and she had previously invoked the 2008 Financial Crisis phrase “too big to fail” to attack Google and other tech giants as monopolies that she saw as being injurious to the country.
In other settings, Warren strongly advocated for greater financial regulation of cryptocurrency which she feared could be used for money laundering to support nefarious activities and the senator asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to “Investigate Google for Manipulation of Online Advertising Market.”
If you Google the phrase “Elizabeth Warren Policies” under news you find a trove of negative results. “Elizabeth Warren’s Anti-Crypto Stance Takes Center Stage in Senate Debate With John Deaton,” one headline reads.
“Pro-crypto candidate John Deaton takes on Elizabeth Warren, promising fresh leadership,” another headline says.
The next proclaims, “‘I wish Senator Warren attacked inflation the way she attacks crypto,’ Deaton says in fiery debate.”
The succeeding headline gives the impression that Warren is an extremist.
“‘I’m not loyal to any party’: John Deaton pitches himself as moderate alternative to Elizabeth Warren,” a Bostom.Com headline says.
Most of the rest of the results continue in this fashion, save one positive story from PBS, which is the last result.
If you broaden your Google search to the phrase “Elizabeth Warren” under news, the results are similar. The second headline reads “Elizabeth Warren’s Crypto Haters Are Burning Cash in Her Senate Race.”
Other headlines question her age, which is 75: “How old are Senators Warren and Markey? Older than suggested maximum age in UMass Poll.”
Some question her political viability: “How blue is Massachusetts, really? Poll reveals level of support for Trump.”
The other results appear from their headlines to be exclusively neutral summaries of the debate against her Republican challenger John Deaton.
In contrast, the headlines for Deaton skew positive.
Applying the same search criterion with Deaton’s name, one receives neutral debate summary headlines, some of the negative Warren news, and a few explicitly positive headlines from Crypto Briefing, such as, “Bitcoin cuts out predatory banking, says pro-crypto attorney John Deaton.”
There is only one headline with a negative hue in a search for Deaton’s name: “Sen. Warren calls out Deaton’s ‘pro-bono work for crypto’ in 2nd debate.” However, this story originates from Cointelegraph, an outlet whose audience presumably may perceive ‘pro-bono work for crypto’ to be good.
Dr. Robert Epstein, an American psychologist and researcher whose recent work has focused on the intersection of digital technology and the human mind, previously identified that search results for Warren are one of the few places where Google’s results skew “right,” regardless of whether the platform has identified a user as liberal, moderate or conservative. Epstein first made this revelation in mid-September and it appears the trend has continued.
However, he did not explore results on Facebook or the complicated financial web that defines much of this story.
A similar search for “Elizabeth Warren” on Facebook shows posts from her and others that are several years old in most cases. If a filter for “recent posts” is applied, the results are more mixed; it is a combination of neutral news headlines, a few posts from Warren, and a prominent plurality of posts criticizing her.
The impression a reader gets from this is that she is one of the few people coming to her own defense while there is an appearance that the public is against her.
Finding a place of common ground between Warren and big tech would be difficult. Google’s parent company Alphabet has increasingly invested in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Facebook’s parent company Meta has made similar investments.
It is not surprising then that The Dallas Express found that much of Deaton’s support has come from the tech industry. According to his Federal Election Commission filings, many of Deaton’s largest donors come from those employed by companies with names like “Blockchain Capital,” “Blockchains Inc.,” and “Blockchain Association.”
“Blockchains” are part of the technology that makes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies possible. Therefore many crypto-related organizations use the word in their names.
Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss are also major donors. These twin brothers are known for their lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom they claimed stole their idea for the famous social media platform. They now are major investors in cryptocurrency.
There are a variety of other venture capital firms listed in Deaton’s donors list, including some like 8808 Ventures which specialize in tech.
In an odd twist, Google’s network has donated to Warren. Campaign finance watchdog Open Secrets reveals that the organization’s network was her top donor, meaning that their network’s donations collectively value more than the donations from any other singular company or organization.
In compliance with federal law, corporations can not donate directly to candidates. Companies frequently get around this by having their networks of executives and PACs make donations for them.
While she received $38,000 from the Google-sphere, this was, by far, not where most of her support came from. The largest industry donors to Warren were Hospitals/Nursing Homes, Retired, and Education. The collective values of these contributions is almost $5 million.
Likewise, Open Secrets only indicates that the Google contribution was made in the last 5 years. Therefore it is unclear if it was intended to support her presidential or senatorial bid.
There have been vanishingly few high-quality polls in the Warren v. Deaton Senate race and none of been conducted since their debate on October 17. The few polls available generally show Warren polling in the high 50s and Deaton in the mid-30s.
However, Deaton appears to have captured the narrative, at least on X, as videos of him hammering Warren on immigration and inflation have reached wide circulation on the platform. It is not yet known if this will have an effect on the race.
Massachusetts has had Republican senators before. Warren defeated then-incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown with 53% to 46% in 2012. Brown had been elected in a special election in 2010 following the death of longtime senator Ted Kennedy.
Irrespective of the election, there have been rumors in recent days that Warren would accept a cabinet job in a potential Harris Administration, although the senator has denied this. Alphabet’s donor network is Harris’s top contributor, according to Open Secrets.
This is hardly the first accusation that Google is using its search engine to affect American elections. Then-presidential contender and congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard previously told Joe Rogan that her Google Ads account was suspended on the night of the first Democratic primary debates after she delivered a bruising attack on Kamala Harris’s prosecutorial record.
The Haiwaiin said Google did not respond to them for hours and then refused to explain why the account had been suspended that evening.
Gabbard brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the company but the case was later dismissed.
DX reached out to Warren, Google, and Facebook for comment, yet no one responded before the time of publication.