Description: Google has been involved with plethora of authoritarian regimes and upheld requests for removal of posts and videos from Russia, China, the Taliban and even Iran. The tech company through its digital omnipresence exemplified by Google search engines has removed up to 200 videos from China, while Russian removal requests constituted up to 60% of the total requests for removal within the company. Videos and media articles have been removed from various digital operators that mostly concerned the criticizing of the governments in Moscow and Beijing. Google also upheld a request from the Taliban’s police forces since their retake of Afghanistan in 2021 and the reintroduction of their morality police forces.
Impact: Information meddling from tech giants such as Google, especially when it concerns countries where freedom of speech and independent journalism are considered luxury, should come under scrutiny. Tech companies have recently come under heavy criticism for their involvement in the development of AI – based weapons and for being found to be complicit in disinformation campaigns. Governments across the world should tighten regulations that are in favor of independent journalism and freedom of speech while censorship from companies such as Google should raise severe questions regarding information dissemination. Google’s hindering of information for users could have severe impact on the objectivity of information and be used in a much more negative context such as disinformation campaigns, election meddling and other hybrid types of threats, from various countries in the world.