Massoud Shadjareh, the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear Tuesday to discuss how Google’s decision to join the United States’ anti-Iran campaign and block the accounts of Iranian media outlets Press TV and HispanTV sets a “dangerous precedent” for free speech.

According to reports, Google blocked access to Press TV and HispanTV’s YouTube and Gmail accounts without any warning last week. Read the article and listen to the interview here.

“I think it’s really shocking,” Shadjareh told host John Kiriakou.

“We don’t expect anything [less] from [US President Donald] Trump and his administration than to behave in this way. And the international community has come to learn and accept this kind of outrageous behavior [against Iran],” he said, also noting that social media platforms and technology companies like Google are supposed to represent freedom of expression. 

“We have been getting a lot of reports, which we [Islamic Human Rights Commission] are investigating right now, that companies like Google are putting algorithms in place so that if you search for certain issues, [the ranking] that comes up will be artificially manipulated, so those views are hidden and not presented… this is actually extremely dangerous, because it creates dictatorship of ideas and thoughts and it gives them [Google] absolute power to manipulate ideas and exclude certain views, and that is not really what social media is supposed to be,” Shadjareh added.