
© Robert Epstein
My research team is currently monitoring online political content being sent to voters in swing states through more than 2,500 computers owned by a politically-diverse group of registered voters (our "field agents"), and we are concerned about what we're seeing.
We are aggregating and analyzing search results on the Google and Bing search engines, messages displayed on Google's home page, autoplay videos suggested on YouTube, tweets sent to users by the Twitter company (as opposed to tweets sent by other users), email suppression on Gmail, and more.
We have so far preserved more than 1.9 million "ephemeral experiences" - exposure to short-lived content that impacts people and then disappears, leaving no trace - that Google and other companies are able to use to shift opinions and voting preferences, and we expect to have captured more than 2.5 million by Election Day.
Comment: Well done, Mr. Epstein. It is a potent reminder that unless those in power are kept under constant scrutiny, they will do whatever they think they can get away with.