On Sunday (28th July, US local time), American billionaire Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to inform that Google has imposed a ‘search ban’ on Donald Trump.
In a tweet, he wrote, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?” Musk shared a screenshot where the search term ‘president donald’ did not show the name of the former US President.
The search term provided autocomplete prompts for only ‘president donald duck’ and ‘president donald regan.’ The tweet by the American billionaire stoked fears about the possible interference of tech giants in the run-up to the 2024 US Presidential elections.
Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024
Election interference? pic.twitter.com/dJzgVAAFZA
In the meantime, the Republican US Senator(Kansas) Roger Marshall accused Google of withholding information about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks.
He also assured an official inquiry into the tech giant this week.
“Why is Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” he inquired.
Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?
— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) July 28, 2024
I’ll be making an official inquiry into @google this week – I look forward… pic.twitter.com/GD5SOvvcdX
However, some social media users pointed out that the autocomplete feature of the Google search engine could not be compared to the actual search results (the screenshots of which were not posted by Elon Musk and Roger Marshall).
In its own words, Google says, “Autocomplete is a time-saving but complex feature. It doesn’t simply display the most common queries on a given topic.” The tech giant states that it prevents ‘predictions’ that may violate its policies pertaining to search, including –
- Dangerous content
- Harassing content
- Hateful content
- Sexually explicit content
- Terrorist content
- Violence and gore
- Vulgar language and profanity
As such, it is quite possible that the assassination bid on Donald Trump did not feature due to the preventive features of Google autocomplete. However, it remains unexplained as to why ‘president donald’ did not provide predictions for Trump.
Different autocomplete rules in different cases
Interestingly, The New York Post performed a series of tests using the Google autocomplete feature. It suffixed the term “assassi” against the names of ex-US Presidents John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt.
It noted, “In each instance, a helpful list of recommended search terms related to the attempts on their lives sprang into view. However, when Trump’s name was used Autocomplete offered no suggestions whatsoever.”
“Even the keywords “Trump assassination attempt” yielded no additional terms from Google,” added The New York Post. It however pointed out that the search results were accurate.
It must be mentioned that The New York Post also found that autocomplete did not provide suggestions regarding the alleged assassination attempt on Joe Biden.
While speaking about the matter to the publication, a Google spokesperson said, “We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to. Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high quality information– we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson said.”
The official claimed that no manual interventions are done to autocomplete predictions.
