Former President Donald Trump ripped into Facebook and Google on Tuesday over accusations that the tech giants have been censoring information about the attempt on his life earlier this month.
Trump’s comments come after social media users noticed that Google did not autocomplete searches for information about the attempted assassination and Facebook was censoring photos of Trump leaving the stage after being shot in the ear. Trump suggested the reason was because the two were trying to rig the election.
“Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump ‘attempted assassination photo,’ and got caught. Same thing for Google. They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“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!” he added.
On Monday, conservative influencer Charlie Kirk pointed out that a post on Facebook featuring the famous photo of Trump leaving the rally stage with blood on his face and the American flag above him had been fact-checked with an “altered label” photo.
In response, Facebook said that it had made a mistake.
“Yes, this was an error. 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,” Facebook communications director Dani Lever wrote.
Google also faced criticism after users pointed out that autofill for searches about the assassination attempt would not generate Trump-related suggestions. Responding to critics, Google said it was working to update its system.
“There was no manual action taken on these predictions,” the spokesman said. “Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring. We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date.”
In the lead up to 2020 election, Facebook suppressed reporting from the New York Post about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that shed a light on alleged influence peddling between Biden and overseas business partners. At the time, former intelligence officers claimed that the laptop was Russian disinformation. The contents of the laptop were later verified, confirming the Post’s reporting.
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