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I first noticed this in the 2018 midterms when Google autocomplete suppressed the JobsNotMobs hashtag. If there's something nefarious going on it's been flying under the radar for a long, long time. Took Elon et al to start complaining before it got generally noticed.
Quite a while ago, Google got in a bit of hot water for its auto complete suggestions. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a nontrivial human filter blocking all sorts of things. Many of those are probably not very political -- don't recommend adult topics at all, especially not around kids content; don't recommend anything suggesting committing a crime; don't recommend "torrent" searching for movie titles. Don't recommend anything that makes the company or it's search product look bad, generally.
I'm not convinced it isn't an intentional hand on the scales, but I think a higher burden of proof is probably necessary to declare it deliberate political bias, rather than the bias of their employees working on more general filters. Which also isn't to say it's unreasonable to ask them to improve the balance of the moderation there either.
ETA: I'm thinking of things like this list, which dates from 2010.
Based on the Google Gemini/Imagen fiasco I’m willing to bet it’s something very dumb and crude being pushed by upper leadership with limited understanding of how the technology works.
Anyone who thinks of Googlers as superhuman geniuses capable of plotting world domination has no idea how Google works and how bureaucratic and lifeless it is.
It's definitely something very dumb and crude, and almost certainly driven by some incredibly but dumbly risk averse mid-level exec who wants to make sure they don't get into trouble with their manager for bad press about bias during election season.
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