Google has received yet another piece of bad news, this time from the House Oversight Committee — which has launched a probe into whether the company’s search engine misled Americans about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Google hid search results on the attempted assassination of President Trump.
Meta censored the iconic photos of Trump rising like a phoenix from gunfire.
Snapchat AI says President Trump was never shot.
Big Tech is interfering in a presidential election again. We can’t let…
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) August 1, 2024
On Wednesday, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) revealed that his staff had spoken with Google last week about the issue. Google reportedly claimed that the search engine’s autocomplete feature had “omitted the Trump assassination attempt” from relevant searches because Google had failed to update “a safety protocol” against violence in order for the search engine to recognize that Trump had been shot during an attempted assassination.
More than two weeks after the assassination attempt, social media users realized that Google search’s autocomplete feature still did not generate any results in the search bar related to the incident. If a user typed in the phrase “assassination attempt on Tru…” into Google, there were zero recommended phrases related to the assassination attempt on Trump, instead showing “assassination attempt on Truman” as the highest result.
Popular X account Libs of TikTok shared a video recording of the search, captioning the post: “Google needs to be hauled in front of Congress to answer for this. Orwellian.”
Google needs to be hauled in front of Congress to answer for this.
Orwellian. pic.twitter.com/jjveFydcgo
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 28, 2024
While many Americans believe that this was an intentional act from the vehemently anti-Trump company, Comer said that regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental, this is just the latest in a long pattern of Big Tech trying to influence elections.
In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Comer declared: “Americans rely upon prominent internet search engines such as Google to gather news and information critical to their understanding of national politics and events—and never more so than during a Presidential election season.”
“On behalf of the American people, the Committee is dedicated to fully understanding when and how information is being suppressed or modified, whether it be due to technical error, a policy intended to ensure safety, or a specific intent to mislead,” the letter continued.
Comer also sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about similar actions taken by his companies, expressing concern that the Facebook AI chatbot had claimed there “was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump.”
This news comes after a historic antitrust court ruling that could lead to Google being broken up.
