Trump accuses Google of burying onservative news in search results

pulse 18:28 - 28 August 2018

On Tuesday, Trump’s ire was directed toward Google, which he said was not showing enough links to content from conservative sources in its search results.

President Donald Trump attacked Google on Tuesday for what he claimed was an effort to intentionally suppress conservative views supportive of his administration, an accusation that increases pressure on technology companies grappling with their increasingly central role as purveyors of information.

Trump’s remarks — an about-face from last month, when he said Google was “one of our great companies” — come ahead of congressional hearings next week in which executives from many of the country’s largest internet companies will be questioned. The president has increasingly targeted technology businesses, along with the news media, over coverage that the White House does not like.

The president wrote on Twitter: “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. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. 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!”

Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, was asked by reporters later on Tuesday whether the administration will be pursuing more regulation of Google. “We’ll let you know,” he said. “We’re taking a look at it.”

In a statement, Google said that its search service was “not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.”

“Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries,” the company added. “We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”

Trump’s attacks on technology companies have increased since Apple, Google and Facebook removed content from Alex Jones, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s agenda. Last week, Trump accused social media companies of “silencing millions of people,” and on Aug. 18, he said the industry was “totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.