Google and Facebook Face Trump’s Fury Over Alleged Censorship of Assassination News

Former President Donald Trump criticized Facebook and Google on Tuesday, accusing the tech giants of censoring information about the recent assassination attempt on his life. His comments followed observations by social media users that Google was not autocompleting searches related to the attack and that Facebook was censoring photos of Trump leaving the stage after being wounded.

“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!”

Key Points:

• Facebook and Google Accusations: Trump accused both platforms of making it difficult to find information and images related to the assassination attempt.

• Censorship Concerns: Conservative influencers, including Charlie Kirk, pointed out that Facebook labeled photos of Trump’s injury as “altered.”

• Tech Giants’ Responses: Facebook admitted to an error, while Google defended its systems and promised updates.

Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk highlighted that a post on Facebook showing Trump with blood on his face had been fact-checked with an “altered label” photo. In response, Facebook communications director Dani Lever said, “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.”

Google also faced backlash after users noticed its autofill feature did not suggest searches related to the assassination attempt involving Trump. A Google spokesperson explained, “There was no manual action taken on these predictions. 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.”

This incident draws parallels to the 2020 election when Facebook suppressed reporting from the New York Post about Hunter Biden's laptop, which revealed alleged influence peddling involving Joe Biden and foreign business partners. Former intelligence officers had initially claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation, but the contents were later verified, confirming the Post’s reporting.

As the debate over censorship and freedom of information intensifies, Trump’s comments highlight ongoing concerns about the power and influence of tech giants in shaping public discourse and information accessibility.

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