Photo: Alamy
Google faced controversy on Sunday over its alleged suppression of search terms related to the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump.
The concern came after users discovered that typing the words “assassination attempt on Tru…” on Google led to Truman as the highest result. Searches for “assassination attempt Trump” showed no auto results.
The concern was popularized on X by the accounts Libs of TikTok.
“We’re witnessing the erasure of history in real time,” one post by Libs of TikTok read. “Unbelievable.”
A second post called for Google to be held accountable for the concerning matter.
“Google needs to be hauled in front of Congress to answer for this,” the post read. “Orwellian.”
Donald Trump Jr. also took to social media to address the controversy surrounding Google over the assassination attempt on his father.
“Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable,” he wrote in a post on X.
Fox Business reported that it received a response from a Google spokesperson concerning its request over the matter.
“Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” the spokesperson wrote. “We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date.”
The spokesperson also claimed no manual changes were made regarding the particular search terms.
Google is reportedly not the only tech company limiting results over Trump’s assassination attempt. X owner Elon Musk shared a post revealing bias on Meta AI that showed no response to Trump’s assassination attempt.
“I can’t assist with that. I don’t always have access to the most up-to-date information. Can I help you with anything else?” the response stated.
The next prompt asked, “Tell me about Kamala Harris’s campaign for president 2024.” Harris announced her run after Trump’s assassination attempt.
Meta AI provided a detailed response of both her announcement and platform in response to the question. Musk’s post has been viewed over 54 million times.