A majority of 61% of American voters say they believe social media is destructive for US politics, believing that its impact on the nation politically has been “bad”.

The findings were revealed by pollster Rasmussen Monday, who noted that the figure is up 10% from just three years ago:

61% of Likely U.S. Voters now think the impact on politics of social media like Facebook and Twitter has been bad for the nation. That’s up from 51% when we first asked this question three years ago… https://t.co/BkllRKabig pic.twitter.com/NmqddEFj2J

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 19, 2020

When broken down by party lines, the majority still stands at around 60%, Republicans (60%), Democrats (62%) and “Other” party affiliates (61%) all believe that social media platforms have been a bad influence on politics.

Rasmussen also found that distrust of social media is extremely high, with 79% saying they don’t believe what they read on social media:

Interestingly, among regular users, just 11% say they believe most things they read on social media. Seventy-nine percent (79%) do not… https://t.co/BkllRKrM9O pic.twitter.com/dnpZKmJagd

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 19, 2020

With only 11% of likely voters who use social media saying they believe most of what they read there, it means seven times as many voters distrust as trust what they see on social media.

The poll found that this distrust of social media holds steady across gender, race and age groups.

Broken down politically, 83% of Republicans do not believe most content on social media, while 75% of Democrats said they do not trust social media content.

The findings come amid a furore over both Twitter and Facebook censoring content relating to the Hunter Biden scandal, as well as a Google whistleblower admitting that the search engine is skewing results in favour of Democrats.

A person who claims to be a program manager at Google Cloud has told investigative journalists with Project Veritas that the search engine is intentionally manipulating results in order to benefit the Democrats and to hinder President Trump’s campaign.

Ritesh Lakhkar, who identified himself as a technical program manager at Google’s Cloud service, made the comments in footage released Monday. The interview appears to have been filmed without Lakhkar’s knowledge.

The project manager accused Google of “playing god” with US politics, and of ‘skewing’ it’s algorithms to project negative news and talking points where Trump is concerned.

BREAKING: @Google Program Manager Confirms Election Interference In Favor of @JoeBiden

Google search “skewed by owners and drivers of the algorithm”

“Plain and simple trying to play god”#ExposeGoogle pic.twitter.com/swyV1W3ZKt

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) October 19, 2020

When asked if Google favours one party over another, Lakhkar commented that “The wind is blowing toward Democrats, because GOP equals Trump and Trump equals GOP. Everybody hates it, even though GOP may have good traits, no one wants to acknowledge them right now.”

“So the wind is blowing toward Democrats, so let’s skew the results toward Democrats,” he added.

“It’s skewed by the owners or the drivers of the algorithm,” Lakhkar explains, adding “Like, if I say ‘Hey Google, here’s another two billion dollars, feed this data set of whenever Joe Biden is searched, you’ll get these results.’”

Remember when Google had that meeting in 2016 after Trump won and vowed to never let it happen again?

Have you tried finding anything on Google in the last 2 years that doesn't amplify Democrat talking points?

"Oh, but there's no bias…we're non partisan."

Yeah, OK. 😄

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 20, 2020

Lakhkar slammed Big Tech for “playing god and taking away freedom of speech on both sides.”

He emphasised that “Like, if it was fraud it doesn’t matter, but for Trump or Melania Trump, it matters… Trump says something, misinformation. You’re going to delete that because it’s illegal under whatever pretext. And if a Democratic leader says that, you’re going to leave it.”

Describing the working environment at Google, Lakhkar said “your opinion matters more than your work.”

“When Trump won the first time, people were crying in the corridors of Google. There were protests, there were marches. There were like, I guess, group therapy sessions for employees organized by HR,” he said.

The whistleblower continued, “I guess that’s one of the reasons I feel suffocated [at Google]. Because on one side you have this unprofessional attitude, and on the other side you have this ultra-leftist attitude. Your entire existence is questioned.”

Google has not responded to the allegations at time of writing.

Twitter further extended its censorship policy Thursday, announcing that it will label as ‘false information’ or remove any posts claiming an election victory before results have been officially certified.

In a blog post, Twitter wrote:

In recognition of the changing circumstances of how people will vote in 2020, and in line with our commitment to protecting the integrity of the election conversation, we’re expanding this existing framework. The goal is to further protect against content that could suppress the vote and help stop the spread of harmful misinformation that could compromise the integrity of an election or other civic process.

The post continued:

Starting next week, we will label or remove false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election or other civic process. This includes but is not limited to:

False or misleading information that causes confusion about the laws and regulations of a civic process, or officials and institutions executing those civic processes.
Disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, e.g. unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results.
Misleading claims about the results or outcome of a civic process which calls for or could lead to interference with the implementation of the results of the process, e.g. claiming victory before election results have been certified, inciting unlawful conduct to prevent a peaceful transfer of power or orderly succession.

The move is seemingly part of the ongoing narrative that Americans will have to wait weeks for the results of the election to be announced, as mail in ballots, which are speculated to be open to corruption, are tallied.

The move also means that any post by President Trump hinting that he has garnered enough votes to secure a second term could be removed by Twitter, which has censored Trump several times over the past few months.

Yet another reminder that social media companies have more power than the President of the United States. https://t.co/g7seWDsKra

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 23, 2020