Shareholder Activist Demands Google, YouTube Reveal Biden Admin’s ‘Take Down’ Requests
National Legal & Policy Center
Today, Paul Chesser, Director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s (NLPC) Corporate Integrity Project, will present remarks at the Alphabet annual meeting to support a shareholder resolution the ethics group filed with the company. NLPC’s Alphabet proposal would require the company to itemize and disclose the nature of 'take-down requests' from the federal government. Last July, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed the Biden Administration is in regular touch with social media platforms to address misinformation, specifically regarding COVID-19. “How, when, and why, are Google and YouTube censoring content on their platforms at the behest of the Biden administration and its agencies like the CDC?” Chesser will ask. “If our resolution passes, they would be required to disclose that information in a report.” The full text of Chesser’s remarks are below: I’m Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project for National Legal and Policy Center. A public service announcement for my fellow shareholder proponents: Beware when a company opposes your resolution by using the term “robust” to describe its existing disclosures. When you see that word “robust,” you can be sure the company is gaslighting you, as Alphabet is doing in its proxy response to my organization’s proposal. Our proposal requests a detailed report that itemizes requests from U.S. government officials and agencies, names those officials, details the nature of each request, tells what Google’s decision was about the request, and provides the rationale for each decision. Alphabet’s proxy response is to refer you its misnamed “Transparency Report,” which tells us nothing, other than to enumerate how many takedown requests they’ve received from various governments around the world. The only reason we won’t get the kind of report my organization requests is because Alphabet’s majority voters, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, don’t want you to know how much the Biden administration conspires with Google and YouTube to censor users of their platforms. MSNBC’s newest personality, former White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, confirmed that in a press conference last year. She said almost one year ago, “We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team.” This was after Biden’s Surgeon General said that “tech and social media companies must do more to address” alleged health misinformation. As we all know now, it was the Biden administration and agencies like the CDC and NIH that were the dis-informers: by lying to the public about COVID and its origins; by pushing shutdowns despite their destructiveness; by ignoring evidence about the ineffectiveness of masks and the failed vaccines; and by censoring information about COVID that they did not approve of. For example, it’s clear Google censored search results for the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which has now been signed by almost 1 million medical and health professionals, and which opposed the prevailing and destructive COVID-19 policies pushed by the Biden administration. Google almost certainly did so at the behest of the NIH’s Francis Collins or Anthony Fauci, or an ally of theirs, not because of any serious scientific rebuttal to the Declaration, but because they were personally offended that their policies were being criticized and disproved. I can’t think of a more catastrophic failure of public policy and guidance for the public than the federal government’s COVID mandates, and both Google and YouTube validated the authoritarianism behind these edicts, by shutting down all dissent – much of which could have improved outcomes and saved lives. Google and YouTube removed information the Biden administration does not want you to access, because they do not believe in free speech. They are morally bankrupt partners in a public policy crime. No wonder why they want to keep it all secret. END REMARKS “Big Tech’s pro-Leftist biases are well established and proven, but Google’s and YouTube’s COVID censorship the last two years have been especially poisonous,” Chesser explains. “These efforts to shut down dissent, at the behest of the Biden administration in an effort to extend their authoritarian reach, are shameful, and had real costs both economically and in terms of lives lost. Alphabet has put itself at legal and financial risk with its efforts to suppress information.” NLPC has filed dozens of shareholder resolutions and appeared at the annual meetings of Berkshire Hathaway, Disney, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, and many others. In addition to Alphabet, Chesser is presenting at the Walmart and Comcast annual meetings today. Founded in 1991, NLPC promotes ethics in public life and government accountability through research, investigation, education, and legal action. ### For more information or to schedule an interview with Paul Chesser, contact Dan Rene at 202-329-8357 or drene@nlpc.org. Please visit http://www.nlpc.org. Founded in 1991, NLPC promotes ethics in public life and government accountability through research, investigation, education, and legal action. Contact Details National Legal and Policy Center Dan Rene +1 202-329-8357 drene@nlpc.org Company Website http://www.nlpc.org
June 01, 2022 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time