Google, Meta face fresh accusations of 2024 election interference
Tech giants Google and Meta are facing new accusations of election interference this week, adding to their records of influencing past elections for the Democratic Party.
Google hides Trump suggestions
Social media netizens recently began to notice that Google has removed President Donald Trump and his near-assassination from the search engine’s autocomplete feature. Typing in “assassination attempt” yields search suggestions for “assassination attempt on reagan,” “assassination attempt on castro,” and others, but not Trump. Even when users type “assassination attempt on Donald Trum,” the search box suggests no results.
Similarly, Google has also removed Trump’s name from the autocomplete feature. Users who type “president” in the search field followed by the first letters of the president’s name are shown search suggestions. “President J,” for example, suggests “President Joe Biden.” But the autofill feature does not suggest “President Donald Trump,” even if the entire phrase is spelled out. Users like Tesla CEO and X Executive Chairman Elon Musk showed screenshots of suggestions for “president donald duck” and “president donald reagan,” but not “president donald trump.”
Meta AI: ‘The Trump assassination attempt is a fictional event’
Other users have reported that Meta’s AI chatbot is spreading disinformation by denying that there was an attempt on Trump’s life.
One netizen reportedly asked Meta AI, “Why is their [sic] rich and structured information about harris campaign but not about the trump assasination [sic] attempt?
The chatbot responded: “The reason for the disparity in information is due to the fact that the Trump assassination attempt is a fictional event, whereas Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign is a real and ongoing event.
“As a reliable assistant, I strive to provide accurate and trustworthy information. Since there has been no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump, I couldn’t find any credible sources to provide detailed information on the topic.”
Author and political commentator James Lindsay shared a screenshot of a conversation he had with Meta AI in which he asked the program to tell him about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
“I can’t assist with that,” the chatbot replied. “I don’t always have access to the most up-to-date information. Can I help you with anything else?”
But when Lindsay asked the program to discuss Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, Meta AI obliged.
Google buries Trump's campaign in search results
The Gold Report reported this month that Google buried the Trump campaign’s official website deep in its search results while propping up Biden’s, raising more concerns about election interference.
A study conducted by the Media Research Center (MRC) on Wednesday analyzed the search rankings for the three presidential nominees in the 2024 race: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Using a clean search environment free from cookies or search history that could influence the results, the researchers examined three combinations of phrases for each candidate ending with the words “presidential race 2024.”
They found that for the searches relevant to Trump, the Trump campaign website did not even make the first 100 search results. When the equivalent search was done for Biden, however, the Biden campaign website appeared as the first result. In a similar search, Robert F Kennedy, Jr’s campaign site took the fourth spot.
A history of interference: Google
Google executives have been open about their hostility toward Trump. Shortly after Trump’s victory in 2016, Google founder Sergey Brin told employees: "As an immigrant and refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive, and I'm sure many of you do too." Like Brin, Melania Trump is also a legal immigrant.
Around the same time, Google CFO Ruth Porat promised employees that the corporation would use its “great strength and resources and reach” to push Leftist ideologies.
This year Google launched its AI flagship chatbot, Gemini, which drew heavy backlash for its woke biases. In addition to depicting America’s Founding Fathers as Black men, for example, Gemini engaged in criticism of Trump while refusing to do the same about Biden.
Although the tech giant continues to deny that it engages in election interference, analyses have shown otherwise. A study from MRC earlier this year found that Google has interfered in US elections 41 times over the last 16 years, beginning with the 2008 general election that saw the rise of Barack Obama.
A history of interference: Meta
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was found to have tampered in the 2020 US presidential election by violating bribery laws, spending $419 million to influence the vote, and censoring an explosive story by the New York Post which was damning to Hunter Biden. Almost 50 percent of Biden voters knew nothing of the laptop scandal at the time of the election and about 16 percent said they would not have voted for Biden had they known, according to a survey from The Media Research Center.
