Behind convenience lies control, as invisible algorithms, DNA tracking, and blacklists reshape beliefs without notice.

The Search Engine Manipulation Effect

In 2015, Dr. Epstein documented what he called the “search engine manipulation effect” (SEME). His experiments showed that simply reordering search results, placing favorable links higher and critical ones lower, could dramatically shift opinions. Among undecided voters, preferences moved by about 20%, with some controlled trials reaching 80%. The same effect appeared even on apolitical subjects, proving that it could influence judgment across a wide range of issues.

Nearly nine out of ten participants never realized their choices had been shaped. Replications across multiple countries confirmed the effect, demonstrating that whoever controls search rankings controls much of the political landscape. Later, Google whistleblower Zach Voorhies revealed that engineers had tools to apply or remove ranking bias with a single command, allowing the company immense control over the political landscape.

DNA, Listening Devices, and Data Harvesting

Dr. Epstein’s warnings extend beyond search manipulation. Google invested in the DNA testing company 23andMe and launched Project Baseline, a nationwide health data initiative. The system combined genetic information with behavioural patterns, while framing it as a service to improve health: mapping predispositions to illness, ancestry, and family ties. The darker side, however, is that whoever controls this data holds predictive power over entire populations.

A similar pattern appeared in consumer devices. In 2019, it was revealed that Google’s Nest products contained hidden microphones. These were never disclosed to buyers, yet the hardware sat silently in people’s homes, always on and always listening. When the discovery became public, Google insisted it was an oversight in their product specifications… merely an error in documentation.

Surveillance Origins and Blacklists

The roots of the google framework stretch back to the 1990s, when intelligence agencies like DARPA and the NSA funded early internet search tools. Their stated goal was tracking potential bomb-makers, as a matter of public safety, but it also laid the foundation for mass surveillance. Out of these early surveillance initiatives, Google’s PageRank algorithm was born. It was designed not only to rank websites by importance, but also to anticipate user intentions and predict what they were likely to click next.

In 2019, documents leaked by Zach Voorhies confirmed the existence of “blacklists,” “fringe ranking classifiers,” and other tools designed to control visibility. Instead of banning content outright, Google buries it—technically online but practically unseen. Employees are instructed to rely on their own “judgment” when deciding what content to suppress, with no clear standards or oversight. These individual choices are then used to train algorithms, embedding human bias and interests into systems that govern billions of searches.

Monitoring Google for Manipulation

Although Google faces antitrust lawsuits, Dr. Epstein argues that these cases are designed to distract from its deeper operations. Courts avoid confronting surveillance, psychological manipulation, and DNA profiling, leaving untouched the most consequential areas and the tools most likely to be used for control.

To address this oversight, or intentional deceit, Dr. Epstein created the “monitoring project.” It deploys a network of software agents that mimic human browsing, recording what Google displays in real time. The system generates verifiable evidence of bias as it happens, revealing whether certain viewpoints are promoted, buried, or erased.

He warns that Google’s influence is no longer limited to advertising or web browsers. Its true power lies in shaping thought itself. By determining what information people encounter first, or whether they encounter it at all, the company places itself directly inside the process of decision-making. The real struggle is over what he calls “consciousness dominance”: the power to guide how individuals form opinions, how societies make choices, and ultimately, how reality is perceived.

Awareness of the Mechanisms of Control

Dr. Epstein warns that what began as a search engine has evolved into a behavioural weapon. Google not only has the power to organize information but to engineer perception, quietly rewriting beliefs. His warnings remind us that freedom demands vigilance. If we do not question what we are shown, we will continue to see our political landscape, our health choices, and even our grasp of truth rewritten, unaware that it is even happening.

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By Adam Zivo

Canada’s policy of deferring to the “leadership” of drug users has proved predictably disastrous. The United States should take heed.

[This article was originally published in City Journal, a public policy magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research]

Progressive “harm reduction” advocates have insisted for decades that active users should take a central role in crafting drug policy. While this belief is profoundly reckless—akin to letting drunk drivers set traffic laws—it is now entrenched in many left-leaning jurisdictions. The harms and absurdities of the position cannot be understated.

While the harm-reduction movement is best known for championing public-health interventions that supposedly minimize the negative effects of drug use, it also has a “social justice” component. In this context, harm reduction tries to redefine addicts as a persecuted minority and illicit drug use as a human right.

This campaign traces its roots to the 1980s and early 1990s, when “queer” activists, desperate to reduce the spread of HIV, began operating underground needle exchanges to curb infections among drug users. These exchanges and similar efforts allowed some more extreme LGBTQ groups to form close bonds with addicts and drug-reform advocates. Together, they normalized the concept of harm reduction, such that, within a few years, needle exchanges would become officially sanctioned public-health interventions.

The alliance between these more radical gay rights advocates and harm-reduction proponents proved enduring. Drug addiction remained linked to HIV, and both groups shared a deep hostility to the police, capitalism, and society’s “moralizing” forces.

In the 1990s, harm-reduction proponents imitated the LGBTQ community’s advocacy tactics. They realized that addicts would have greater political capital if they were considered a persecuted minority group, which could legitimize their demands for extensive accommodations and legal protections under human rights laws. Harm reductionists thus argued that addiction was a kind of disability, and that, like the disabled, active users were victims of social exclusion who should be given a leading role in crafting drug policy.

These arguments were not entirely specious. Addiction can reasonably be considered a mental and physical disability because illicit drugs hijack users’ brains and bodies. But being disabled doesn’t necessarily mean that one is part of a persecuted group, much less that one should be given control over public policy.

More fundamentally, advocates were wrong to argue that the stigma associated with drug addiction was senseless persecution. In fact, it was a reasonable response to anti-social behavior. Drug addiction severely impairs a person’s judgement, often making him a threat to himself and others. Someone who is constantly high and must rob others to fuel his habit is a self-evident danger to society.

Despite these obvious pitfalls, portraying drug addicts as a persecuted minority group became increasingly popular in the 2000s, thanks to several North American AIDS organizations that pivoted to addiction work after the HIV epidemic subsided.

In 2005, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network published a report titled “Nothing about us without us.” (The nonprofit joined other groups in publishing an international version in 2008.) The 2005 report included a “manifesto” written by Canadian drug users, who complained that they were “among the most vilified and demonized groups in society” and demanded that policymakers respect their “expertise and professionalism in addressing drug use.”

The international report argued that addiction qualified as a disability under international human rights treaties, and called on governments to “enact anti-discrimination or protective laws to reduce human rights violations based on dependence to drugs.” It further advised that drug users be heavily involved in addiction-related policy and decision-making bodies; that addict-led organizations be established and amply funded; and that “community-based organizations . . . increase involvement of people who use drugs at all levels of the organization.”

While the international report suggested that addicts could serve as effective policymakers, it also presented them as incapable of basic professionalism. In a list of “do’s and don’ts,” the authors counseled potential employers to pay addicts in cash and not to pass judgment if the money were spent on drugs. They also encouraged policymakers to hold meetings “in a low-key setting or in a setting where users already hang out,” and to avoid scheduling meetings at “9 a.m., or on welfare cheque issue day.” In cases where addicts must travel for policy-related work, the report recommended policymakers provide “access to sterile injecting equipment” and “advice from a local person who uses drugs.”

The international report further asserted that if an organization’s employees—even those who are former drug users—were bothered by the presence of addicts, then management should refer those employees to counselling at the organization’s expense. “Under no circumstances should [drug addicts] be reprimanded, singled out or made to feel responsible in any way for the triggering responses of others,” stressed the authors.

Reflecting the document’s general hostility to recovery, the international report emphasized that former drug addicts “can never replace involvement of active users” in public policy work, because people in recovery “may be somewhat disconnected from the community they seek to represent, may have other priorities than active users, may sometimes even have different and conflicting agenda, and may find it difficult to be around people who currently use drugs.”

The messaging in these reports proved highly influential throughout the 2000s and 2010s. In Canada, federal and provincial human rights legislation expanded to protect active addicts on the basis of disability. Reformers in the United States mirrored Canadian activists’ appeals to addicts’ “lived experience,” albeit with less success. For now, American anti-discrimination protections only extend to people who have a history of addiction but who are not actively using drugs.

The harm reduction movement reached its zenith in the early 2020s, after the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world and instigated a global spike in addiction. During this period, North American drug-reform activists again promoted the importance of treating addicts like public-health experts.

Canada was at the forefront of this push. For example, the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs released its “Hear Us, See Us, Respect Us” report in 2021, which recommended that organizations “deliberately choose to normalize the culture of drug use” and pay addicts $25-50 per hour. The authors stressed that employers should pay addicts “under the table” in cash to avoid jeopardizing access to government benefits.

These ideas had a profound impact on Canadian drug policy. Throughout the country, public health officials pushed for radical pro-drug experiments, including giving away free heroin-strength opioids without supervision, simply because addicts told researchers that doing so would be helpful. In 2024, British Columbia’s top doctor even called for the legalization of all illicit drugs (“non-medical safer supply”) primarily on the basis of addict testimonials, with almost no other supporting evidence.

For Canadian policymakers, deferring to the “lived experiences” and “leadership” of drug users meant giving addicts almost everything they asked for. The results were predictably disastrous: crime, public disorder, overdoses, and program fraud skyrocketed. Things have been less dire in the United States, where the harm reduction movement is much weaker. But Americans should be vigilant and ensure that this ideology does not flower in their own backyard.