On May 25, George Floyd was arrested in Minneapolis after responding to a call accusing Floyd of using a counterfeit $20 bill at a local deli.
Floyd was removed from his vehicle by two officers and cuffed, before being escorted across the street to a police vehicle. Civilian footage then picks up, showing officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck while Floyd pleads and tells the officer he can’t breathe.
The 10-minute-long civilian video went viral on Facebook. For 8 of those minutes, Floyd is seen suffocating. Chauvin only releases pressure when paramedics arrive, long after bystanders started yelling that he’s motionless.
In the aftermath, peaceful protests quickly turned into riots and looting around the city. Gov. Tim Walz activated the national guard, as local police struggle to control the city using rubber bullets and tear gas.
The local community’s anger and frustration here is understandable, in the face of a tragedy that tipped an already overflowing pressure cooker of racial tensions across the country. That said, official response has been largely sympathetic.
Mayor Frey announced the next day that the four officers involved had been fired. Additionally, the FBI launched a civil rights investigation to determine whether the officers had violated any federal or criminal laws.
Even President Trump has condemned the incident as very sad and “heartbreaking”.
As we watch this long dormant powder keg explode out of control, Google seems to be trying to control the narrative, as usual.
I’ve been mostly following the story on social media. However when I decided to Google it, I was disappointed. Though not at all surprised.
I asked the Google Assistant “Who is George Floyd?”. Along with the typical search results that came up, there was a “video” tab as well. I clicked it.
Instead of seeing any of the civilian footage of the incident, I was presented with one single video from ABC7 titled “George Floyd: Minneapolis police release bodycam footage near in-custody death”. Okay.
I wasted 15 minutes of my life watching that highly doctored and censored video, showing absolutely nothing of value. When I say censored, I don’t mean that faces are blurred. I mean giant black squares covering anything of potential interest. Entire people were hidden. More parts of the audio were muted than available.
The footage is a joke. It didn’t even come from any of the main officers involved, or in the heat of the controversial moments. It’s really an understatement to call it a waste of time.
Angry comments on the video call it entirely useless, but I don’t think it’s useless at all.
What happened here is that authorities gave their version of the narrative to Google. Regardless of whether this version contains anything at all, Google is now serving it up as the truth. And the police department now has the defense and false impression of good will that comes with saying “Hey, we released the footage”.
Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe it’s just a weird glitch with the Google Assistant. So I fired up a browser and checked Google search.
Low and behold, the very first video result is that one.
What if that video is just really optimized for search engines and is organically ranked so high? Well, I checked my default search engine StartPage, which actually uses Google’s search index as well.
And eureka. The first result is in fact from NBC criticizing the bodycam footage. That’s also the first result I saw in YouTube’s search. Which tells me that this was the default outcome of the algorithm, but that Google was intentionally manipulating the results in this case.
Regardless of whether or not my accusations are true, this is a great example of the danger that comes with Google elevating mainstream voices over independent ones. To borrow Eric Weinstein’s terminology, it reenforces the gated institutional narrative (GIN) in an all too common display of the distributed idea suppression complex (DISC).
Obviously this is a highly sensitive issue. Which is all the more reason for the objective truth to be front and center in our collective perception. That way we can have productive dialog about things. Rather than each side believing in a wildly different version of reality.