Steve King asks Google CEO for names of employees to see if they’re liberals

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai to disclose the names of more than 1,000 employees who work on the search engine’s algorithm to examine for “a built-in bias.”

“There is a very strong conviction on this side of the aisle that the algorithms are written with a bias against conservatives,” King said Tuesday during a House Judiciary hearing.

“What we don’t know are who are these thousand people and we don’t know what their social media looks like.”

{mosads}Pichai explained to King that Google employees do not select certain news outlets over others, rather the search engine is responsive to users and what they are clicking on.

King alleged a built in bias exists among Google employees because the county where Google’s headquarters is located is seen as reliably blue and overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

“We have at least theoretically a built in bias thats here, it’s not being examined and not examining the social media,” King said. “How would you expect that you can get to an objective result?”

Pichai denied that Google search is biased against conservatives and said the company does not monitor its employees’ social media.