Donald Trump is refusing to back down from his claim that Google ‘rigged’ its search engine results to show bad news stories about him.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that Google, as well as American social media giants Facebook and Twitter, needs to tread carefully.
‘I think that Google really taking advantage of a lot of people,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair to large portions of the population.’
Invoking Facebook and Twitter, he said, ‘We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that.’
RED CARD: Donald Trump is refusing to back down from his claim that Google ‘rigged’ its search engine results to show bad news stories about him
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that Google, as well as American social media giants Facebook and Twitter, needs to tread carefully. ‘I think that Google really taking advantage of a lot of people,’ he said
Trump made the remarks during a press event with U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro (L) and FIFA President Gianni Infantino (R). They presented him with a ‘red card’ during their comments
The president had launched an early-morning attack on Google after apparently seeing a chart on a conservative news site that claimed to portray news outlets’ biases. The article containing the chart was headlined ’96 Percent of Google Search Results for “Trump” News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.’
He claimed in the tweets that the search engine giant is ‘suppressing’ the voices of conservatives and ‘hiding information and news that is good.’ He hinted that his administration was considering official action.
Google categorically denied that politics play any role in the complex algorithms that determine what users are shown when they search a term.
It said in a statement responding to Trump it said: ‘Search is not used to set a political agenda’ and that ‘we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.’
Donald Trump launched into an attack on Google on Tuesday morning, accusing the web giant of rigging its search results to make him look bad
Trump threatened to address what he called ‘a very serious situation’, though it is not clear how he intends to do this
Google’s parent company’s stock fluctuated all day as Trump assailed the search engine and it fought back
Trump said in his tweets: ‘Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media.
‘In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent,’ he tweeted. ‘Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.’
He said, ‘Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see.’
‘This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!’
Trump tweeted, and deleted, then retweeted the same assault on Google later in the day, adding an ‘s’ to the words ‘news’ to correct a typo.
After Trump’s first round of tweets, the president’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told reporters at the White House, ‘There needs to be some form of regulation for Google.’
‘We’ll let you know. We’re taking a look at it,’ he said.
Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, saw its stock close more than 10 points down on NASDAQ amid the spat.
The president had launched an early-morning attack on the firm after apparently seeing a chart on a conservative news site that claimed to portray news outlets’ biases. The article containing the chart was headlined ’96 Percent of Google Search Results for “Trump” News Are from Liberal Media Outlets’
In response, Google issued a statement saying: ‘When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds.
‘Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,’ the statement said. ‘Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to our users’ queries.’
The tech firm said, ‘We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.’
Google for Jobs co-founder Nick Zakrasek later told Fox Business, ‘We never rank results to manipulate political sentiment.’
He said in the Tuesday interview on the network, ‘We continually work to improve Google search.’
Zakrasek also explained that when ‘users type queries into the Google search bar, our goal is to make sure that they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results towards any political ideology.
‘Every year we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure that they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google search and we never rank results to manipulate political sentiment.’
Google uses a complex algorithm to decide which search results a user is presented with, though its exact workings are a closely guarded secret
Trump’s tweets come after Alex Jones urged the President to weigh in on censorship after he was booted off Facebook, YouTube and Spotify for ‘hate speech’
Google uses a complex algorithm to decide what results users are presented with, although its exact workings remain a closely guarded corporate secret.
The firm has revealed that a user’s search history will affect the results, so it is possible that any given user’s reading habits will determine which news outlets they see information from in the future.
Trump appeared to base his argument on a report from PJ Media, a conservative news site that posited that Google might be ‘manipulating its algorithm to prioritize left-leaning news outlets.’
The piece claimed that CNN has a ‘disproportionate’ share of articles showing up at the top of search.
CNN is a favorite ‘fake news media’ target of the president.
‘I performed the search a multiple times using different computers (registered to different users) and Google returned similar results,’ the article’s author said. ‘While not scientific, the results suggest a pattern of bias against right-leaning content.’
The author relied on a chart put together by Sharyl Attkisson, host of the Sunday morning program ‘Full Measure,’ to determine which outlets skew left.
It’s not clear what metrics the TV journalist used to create the chart. She says on her website, ‘The placement is based on perceived overall tone and audience.’
She also said in a message that she posted the same day that Trump sent his tweets that she’s been updating the chart based on new and additional information.
Other right-wing figures have been arguing for months that their voices are being silenced online by the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and Google — all three of which are due to testify next week to Congress.
Conservative bloggers Diamond and Silk accused Facebook of censoring their message after noticing dwindling audience figures earlier this year.
Since then there have been multiple congressional hearings about the issue, with tech companies repeatedly denying that they promote or demote content based on its political content.
Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress over election meddling was also peppered with questions about the suppression of conservative voices earlier this year.
Earlier this month, Alex Jones’s Infowars program was removed from all platforms with the exception of Twitter for promoting hate speech and conspiracy theories.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will testify before the Senate next week and are also expected to be asked about Trump’s claims their social media companies are biased against conservatives.
During his own testimony before Congress, Mark Zuckerberg faced repeated questions about censorship of conservative voices, which he denied
In recent weeks Trump has stepped up his attacks on censorship, telling a rally in West Virginia that it is worse than his old foe ‘fake news media’
Jones, an avid Trump supporter, appealed directly to the president to put an end to ‘censorship’ after his content was pulled.
Since then, Trump has tweeted multiple times about the issue, including on August 18 when he accused social media of ‘totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices’ and vowing: ‘We won’t let that happen.’
On Friday of last week he renewed his attack, accusing the same networks of ‘silencing millions of people.’
And at a rally in West Virginia earlier in the week, the president even suggested that censorship was worse than his old foe the ‘fake news media’.
Trump said ‘social media censorship’ is ‘the new thing’ but he’d rather have ‘fake news’ over people being ‘stopped and censored.’
‘So we’ll live with fake news. I mean, I hate to say it,’ he said, ‘Because that’s by far the better alternative.’
Trump has attacked tech giants on other occasions, too, in the past. He has accused American firms of suppressing bad news about his former general election opponent.
In October 2016, Trump accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of burying the news that Hillary Clinton was being investigated by the FBI over her emails – branding them the ‘very dishonest media.’
Trump clashed with social media firms over censorship earlier this month when he accused companies of ‘discriminating’ against Republicans and Conservatives