by Casey Harper
Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.
Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Users on these sites can have different experiences depending on the algorithm, but enough users experienced it to raise concerns, including billionaire Elon Musk, who reposted users writing about these concerns.
Musk quoted one user, Arynne Wexler, who wrote, “Why is it that when you google Donald Trump, you get news about Kamala Harris. But when you google Kamala Harris, you don’t get news about Donald Trump?”
Google told CBS MoneyWatch that the search problems were technical “anomalies” that could affect any search and were not intentional.
Facebook admitted the mistake Monday.
“This was an error,” Facebook Communications Director Dani Levi wrote on X in response to a post about Facebook censoring the iconic photo of Trump holding his fist in the air after the shooting. “This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake.”
On Tuesday, Trump blasted the companies.
“Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump ‘attempted assassination photo,’ and got caught,” Trump said in a statement. “Same thing for Google. They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act. Both are facing BIG BACKLASH OVER CENSORSHIP CLAIMS. Here we go again, another attempt at RIGGING THE ELECTION!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. LET THEM KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE TO THEM, WILL BE MUCH TOUGHER THIS TIME. MAGA2024!”
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Casey Harper is a Senior Reporter at The Center Square, for the Washington, D.C. Bureau. He previously worked for The Daily Caller, The Hill, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. A graduate of Hillsdale College, Casey’s work has also appeared in Fox News, Fox Business, and USA Today.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Google” by The Pancake of Heaven!. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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