Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has acknowledged that technical bugs and issues with the search engine algorithm resulted in failures within the search engine’s results related to former President Donald Trump and the recent assassination attempt on his life. These findings were revealed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Last week, Google users noticed that when searching for information about the former president, the search results primarily displayed news stories about Vice President Kamala Harris. Additionally, Trump’s name was conspicuously absent from Google’s suggested queries when users searched for it or sought information about the assassination attempt on July 13.
As the head of the House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization of the Federal Government panel, Jordan is investigating whether these anomalies were accidental or part of a deliberate attempt to influence the 2024 presidential election.
In a statement to the committee and select subcommittee, Alphabet, through its counsel, admitted that the predictions for queries about the assassination attempt on former President Trump should have appeared but did not. Google attorney Daniel Donovan attributed this issue to the search engine’s outdated protections around political violence, specifically pointing to the autocomplete feature. He assured that the problem has been resolved.
Donovan also blamed the omission of Trump’s name from Google’s suggested searches list on a bug, which was subsequently fixed in an update.
Regarding the search results displaying news stories about the vice president instead of Trump, Donovan reportedly attributed the problem to the search engine’s algorithm, which automatically presents news stories related to the search inquiries.
When discussing Alphabet’s response, Jordan remarked that the company acknowledged that predictions “may be unexpected or imperfect, and bugs will occur.”
Unsatisfied with Google’s explanations, Jordan has provided a list of questions that committee members expect the attorney to address during a briefing scheduled for later this week.
The committee seeks to understand when Google first became aware of the search problems in question, the duration of the issues, the time taken to rectify them, and their overall impact on Americans’ ability to access information about the Republican presidential nominee.
The specific date of the briefing was not disclosed in the letter.
The suggested search terms included “President Donald Duck” and “President Donald Reagan” alongside a picture of President Ronald Reagan, while Trump’s name was notably absent from the list.
Elon Musk commented on this situation, stating, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Is this election interference?”
In recent weeks, Google is not the only tech company facing such allegations. In a statement on July 30, Meta acknowledged that its fact-check label was mistakenly applied due to the circulation of an altered photo where Secret Service agents appeared to be smiling around Trump.
Regarding the controversial chatbot issue, Meta clarified that it was an intentional decision by programmers to prevent the dissemination of incorrect information. They programmed their AI to avoid answering questions related to the attempted assassination and instead provide a generic response stating that it couldn’t provide any information. This explains why some users reported the AI’s refusal to engage on this topic. The company admitted that its programmers should have made these updates sooner.
Meta emphasized its commitment to ensuring platforms where individuals can freely express themselves and stated that they are constantly working to make improvements.
In a now-deleted Truth Social post on July 30, Trump urged his supporters to take action against Meta and Google, alleging yet another attempt at election manipulation.
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