Trump rails against Google searches
President’s tweets accuse tech giant of rigging searches
The Trump administration says it will explore regulating Google after the president complains the search engine giant is rigged against him.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would explore regulating Google — an effort that would challenge protections around free speech online — in response to the president’s allegations that the tech giant manipulates its search results to prominently display negative stories about him and other Republicans.
President Donald Trump in a pre-dawn tweet claimed that search returns for “Trump News” were “RIGGED for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,” apparently responding to a report from Fox News. Then, his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said the White House is now “taking a look” at whether, and how, Google should be regulated by the government.
In the United States, regulating search results could violate the First Amendment, said lawmakers from both parties, free speech advocates and tech experts. The Trump administration’s threat drew rebukes from Democrats and even a few Republicans, who said government shouldn’t play a role in monitoring search results or other content online.
“We can all agree on one thing: Poison is being spread on the internet, but what is poison? Somebody is going to have to step in and be a neutral arbiter of what can go on, and what can’t,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La., who cautioned he hadn’t seen the president’s tweet. “I don’t want to see the government do that.”
Google denied the allegations and said its search results aren’t politically biased.
Trump’s comments marked a major escalation in allegations of anti-conservative censorship against Google, Facebook and Twitter, which some in the tech industry worry could undermine the public’s trust in the Web as a marketplace of ideas.
‘Troubled territory’
“Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful,” the president said later Tuesday. “It’s not fair to large portions of the population.”
Google processes 90 percent of searches globally, and its powerful algorithms return results based on their calculated relevance, a process Google portrays as neutral. Google takes into account multiple signals including a user’s geographic location and browsing history, which is why Trump’s search results look different from what another user might see. Social media differs from search because information on social media platforms is circulated through friends and brands that users choose to follow.
Riva Sciuto, a spokeswoman for Google, said when users “type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda, and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.”
Conservative bias?
But Google’s algorithm is shrouded in secrecy, and in the past, Google has faced investigations for giving preference to its own products and services in search results.
The controversy Tuesday also illustrates the tricky political terrain that Google and its tech peers now navigate. Regulators and users increasingly demand that Silicon Valley apply a heavier hand in moderating content that appears online to prevent harassment, stop hate speech and ensure civil political discourse. At the same time, those decisions about what to allow, and what to take down, aren’t always . A decision this month from Facebook, Googleowned YouTube and Twitter to discipline Infowars, a conspiracy theory site founded by Alex Jones, drew the attention of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted that sites like Breitbart and Daily Caller could be next.
Conservatives’ attacks have intensified as the 2018 election has drawn closer. Trump has tweeted three times since late July about “discriminatory” practices at Twitter and social media sites.