Google launches censorship measures to rig EU Parliamentary elections

Reports recently indicated that tech giant Google is about to embark on an anti-misinformation campaign and tougher new rules tackling online content in five European Union (EU) countries in time for the European Parliament election in June 2024 to hopefully “sway voters’ stance” on some issues.

According to Reuters, France, Poland and Germany accused Russia last week of putting together an elaborate network of websites to spread pro-Russian propaganda. Because of this, Europe’s Digital Services Act, which had been fully in effect the previous week, required large online platforms and search engines to do more to “address illegal content and risks to public security.”

Meanwhile, Jigsaw, a unit within the Big Tech firm that explores “threats to open societies,” plans to run animated ads on TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Poland. It said that this project will reach citizens in countries with some of the largest number of voters in the bloc. The said ads will feature “pre bunking” techniques, which is their “anticipatory form of rumor control,” in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and University of Bristol researchers. Experts believe that this will help viewers identify manipulative content before encountering it.

“We’ve spent so much time having these really polarized debates. Our democracy is at stake, and the temperature just keeps getting higher and higher,” Jigsaw head of research Beth Goldberg said, adding that prebunking is the only technique that works equally effectively across the political spectrum.

For Bangkok-based American journalist Ben Bartee, the technocrats have been so far succeeding in advancing their measures in weaponizing technology. In his recent Substack newsletter, he said: “With each step, with each successive advancement in weaponized technology – which comes faster and faster as the rate of development skyrockets – the corporate state inches closer to achieving its ultimate objective of totalitarian control.” He warned that the world is actually on the second stage of a three-part descent into techno-hell. “In the end, of course, the social control will descend to the level of the individual mind itself, with neurological implants or other tools rendering the very act o