Former President Donald Trump accused Facebook and Google of censoring news of his assassination attempt, saying it’s an attempt to rig the election.
“Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump ‘attempted assassination photo,’ and got caught. Same thing for Google,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday. “They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act.”
“Both are facing big backlash over censorship claims,” he said as he switched into his signature all-capitals style. “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. MAGA 2024!”
According to users, the iconic photo of Mr. Trump pumping his fist behind the podium surrounded by his Secret Service at his Pennsylvania rally after being shot at earlier this month was being labeled as an altered photo.
Meta spokesperson Dani Lever said Monday on X that it was an inadvertent mistake.
“This was an error,” Meta spokesperson Dani Lever wrote on social platform X. “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.”
The fuss over the photo comes after Google users had noted earlier this week that the website autocomplete feature was not showing results for the shooting that took place on July 13.
They noted that when one typed in the search terms “attempted assassination” and then started to enter Mr. Trump’s surname, the autocomplete only would suggest “Truman,” a reference to a 1950 attempt on the life of President Harry S. Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists.
Donald Trump Jr. said that this shows how “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 on X.
Google spokesperson Lara Levin told The Washington Times that no manual action was taken on the search predictions regarding the attempted assassination and that autocomplete results for Mr. Trump were not working correctly.
Ms. Levin said Google’s systems protect against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which worked before the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump and the company is seeking to update its systems now.
Autocomplete results for prominent political figures are failing more broadly as well, according to Ms. Levin. She said the results are “dynamic” and subject to trending queries.
“Autocomplete is currently not working as intended for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president,” Ms. Levin said in a statement. “We’re looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon.”
Big Tech has been accused in the past of trying to silence conservative voices on matters ranging from suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story to banning users over mainstream conservative ideas that liberals categorize as hate speech.
Mr. Trump has had a rough relationship with Facebook and its parent company Meta ever since he was banned from the social media platform after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
His account was reinstated in January 2023.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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