Google de-ranking and Washington pressure

After Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California pressured its general counsel at a hearing, Google de-ranked the Russian state media enterprise RT in its search results. As a private company, Google would have been within its rights to arrive at such a decision for reasons of its own. But for it to do so in response to government pressure, as appears to have happened here, poses very real First Amendment problems [John Samples, Cato]

2 Comments

  • I truly hope that Google’s decision was an internal, independent decision and not pressured by the government. I believe it was the right decision, but the process must be right as well.

    • That would be very difficult to believe when multiple government officials were very publicly threatening Google with some form of consequences if the didn’t do it.