EPISODE 131 · JUL 23, 2023 · 1H 39M
Zach Vorhies Google Uncovered
EPISODE 131 · ZACH VORHIES
Google Uncovered
Zach Vorhies walked out of Google in June 2019 with 950 pages of internal documents proving the company had built a censorship apparatus designed to re-rank the entire internet according to corporate values. Machine learning fairness — their internal term for algorithmic suppression of anything that threatened the narrative. Not fake news. Real news Google didn't want you to see.
This conversation moves through the Las Vegas massacre blacklist injected the day after the shooting, the YouTube headquarters attack with victims who still have no names five years later, the Derrida team deleting the word 'covfefe' from Google Translate to make Trump look insane, and the bomb squad showing up at Zach's house after he posted a dead man switch warning. The cost of standing up when everyone else went along? A quarter million dollar salary traded for semi-poverty and a soul still intact.
- Machine learning fairness Google's internal term for algorithmic censorship. Training data is collected, algorithms programmed, media filtered and ranked, and users *programmed* — Google's own slide deck language. Factual accuracy can still be classified as algorithmic unfairness if it reinforces existing stereotypes. The system re-biases the internet according to corporate values, not reality.
- Consensus cracking Taking internal information normalized inside the company and exposing it to the public. Once the broader world reacts, employees inside experience cognitive dissonance — the world they thought they were building doesn't match how everyone else sees it. The leak changes the company's operational structure permanently.
- The Las Vegas massacre blacklist YouTube's controversial query blacklist was injected October 2, 2017 — the day after the Vegas shooting. Twenty pages of suppressed terms, half related strictly to Vegas. Google censored anything suggesting the shooter was a Democrat, allowed anything suggesting he was a Republican. Multiple shooter reports, airport gunfight, Saudi royal family presence, MBS assassination attempt angle — all suppressed.
- Functional freeze at scale Most Google employees knew what was happening but went along with it. Mass formation inside the corporation — sensing what everyone else senses, no objections to machine learning fairness means it gets normalized. The psychic pressure to conform overrides individual moral objection.
- Information laundering through fiction People consume entertainment showing intelligence operations, frame jobs, murder-suicides — then reject those same patterns when they appear in real news. The association with fiction inoculates them against recognizing reality. The circuit flips: *this happens on TV, not in real life*.
- YouTube headquarters shooting — unnamed victims April 2018. Zach witnessed the body, saw the blood. Two people shot. Five years later, still no names released. He went to the hospital with a get-well card — they wouldn't tell him who the victims were. No rumors at work. No one asking where Jane from accounting went. Transvestite shooter, father worked for Iranian intelligence, spent the night before in the Google parking lot where police checked and released them.
- Covfefe — deleting a word Trump tweets 'covfefe' May 31, 2017. Google Translate had been translating the Arabic word to 'we will stand up.' New York Times writes hit piece July 1 saying it's nonsense. Google's Derrida team — named after Jacques Derrida, founder of postmodernism — removes the word from the Arabic translation dictionary. Media then uses Trump's 'nonsense tweets' to advocate for 25th Amendment removal due to mental incapacitation. Treasonous insurrection through linguistic sabotage.
- Why they leave him alone now Every time someone writes about Zach, readers find his website — front and center are the 950 pages of Google documents. The leaks are adjacent to his name. To attack him is to platform the evidence. So they ignore him. He made the company operationally paranoid, forced them to lock down like the CIA, killed their innovation capacity.
Standout
Quotes
"I always kind of thought that if the Nazis ever came to America, I would be one of the ones that would stand up to them. And I thought that most of the people had that similar mindset. But when Google started doing their evil things, I realized that I just couldn't sit by and idly let it happen. And surprisingly, not everyone is built that way."
Zach Vorhies
"Step four: people like us are programmed. That's direct in their language. And it was in multiple slides. And it was done by their AI ethicists, right? Like, it's unbelievable that the source of the rot came from the ethicists themselves."
Zach Vorhies
"Wouldn't it be funny if this was like a mass shooting is sort of like crossed my mind. But I was like, okay, you know, that's dumb."
Zach Vorhies
"Five years later, we have no idea who the victims are. How can you hide someone getting shot? And we still don't know their names. That just doesn't make any sense."
Zach Vorhies
"They're saying that they want to do a scan of background actors, images and likeness, pay them for one day of work, and then use them perpetually in any capacity that they want without consent. Welcome to the AI world."
Zach Vorhies
"I now live a life of semi-poverty, but you know, at least I'm fulfilled and rich in the spirit. And not wanting to die every single day for selling my soul out to the devil."
Zach Vorhies
"You can either look at this as like, oh, it's really bad. Everything's awful. Or be like, this is the most happening time of all lifetimes. Like literally the birth of AI, the last invention that humankind has ever made is happened in our lifetime."
Zach Vorhies
Keep exploring
Related conversations
More from HFTT
Three doors into the work
Start Here · Free
7-Day Self-Esteem Reset
A seven day immersive mini course experience. Less than 10 minutes each day. Finish it and it’s yours for life.
Take the ResetCommunity
Friends of the Truth
The best community on the internet — in our opinion. Funnier than your group chat. Deeper than your therapist.
Join FOTTLive Cohort · By Application
RATH Academy
The 6-month live container — deprogramming, nervous system, entrepreneurship, held weekly. 5 spots, by application. Doors close Aug 31.
Enter the Portal
What landed for you?