Elections

Google admits to omitting Trump assassination attempt searches in autocomplete tool function

Published

4 months ago

August 7, 2024

An attorney for Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., acknowledged that the autocomplete tool for its search function failed to include predictions related to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. This admission follows controversy online regarding apparent search issues.

Alphabet Inc.’s counsel informed the House Judiciary Committee that bugs in Google’s autocomplete tool prevented it from predicting searches about the assassination attempt on Trump. The built-in protections designed to manage searches related to political violence were “out of date,” the attorney explained, and this outdated system prevented the search autocomplete feature from generating results for the assassination attempt three weeks ago.

The autocomplete feature also experienced issues when users searched for “President Donald” and related terms. The attorney mentioned that these bugs were fixed after they were brought to Google’s attention, reports National Review.

In addition, Google claimed that an algorithmic error was responsible for displaying news stories about Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2024 rival, when users searched for Trump’s name.

Ahead of a private briefing with Judiciary Committee staff, committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) sent a letter to Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai, listing questions about the search issues.

“Recent reporting has indicated that Google may now be interfering in the 2024 presidential election by censoring information about former President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign for the presidency, including relating to the July 13 assassination attempt on him in Pennsylvania,” the letter reads.

“In response to the Committee and Select Subcommittee’s oversight, your counsel provided the Committee and Select Subcommittee with non-public information about Google’s issues with Search and Autocomplete and the company’s efforts to correct them, in addition to offering a private briefing to the Committee and Select Subcommittee this week.”

Jordan asked Pichai for more specific details about the bugs that caused “President Donald” searches to not show an autocomplete for Trump’s name and about the errors that prioritized stories about Harris in searches for Trump.

Trump and many conservatives strongly criticized the search issues, leading Google to issue a detailed statement addressing accusations of political censorship.

“After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those predicted queries should have appeared but didn’t. Once the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they’re already rolling out. You can see many relevant predictions now,” Google said on X last week.

The issue with the “President Donald” search autocomplete affected other presidents such as former president Obama, Google stated. The malfunction appears to have been resolved.

Google also explained that the news-recommendation feature generating Harris stories for users searching for Trump is not unique, given her status as the Democratic party’s presumptive presidential nominee after President Joe Biden stepped aside from the presidential contest.

“Overall, these types of prediction and labeling systems are algorithmic. While our systems work very well most of the time, you can find predictions that may be unexpected or imperfect, and bugs will occur,” Google concluded. National Review has reached out for further comment.

Google’s challenges extend beyond this incident, as it recently faced a significant defeat in an antitrust case brought by the Justice Department and states’ attorneys general.

Google is not alone in facing scrutiny over its handling of the Trump assassination attempt. Meta also received backlash for suppressing images of Trump fist-pumping after being injured during the attempt. Trump told Fox News last week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the apparent censorship and assured him that Meta is correcting the error.

“He actually apologized. He said they made a mistake . . . and they’re correcting the mistake,” Trump said, while noting that Google did not contact him about the search issues.

A Meta spokeswoman clarified that Facebook’s fact-checking systems were erroneously applied to images of Trump after doctored photos resembling the real images circulated.

Related Topics:2024 elections Featured Trump assassination attempt

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Elections

Canada Beefs up Border Security After Trump Threatened Sweeping Tariffs

Published

1 week ago

December 3, 2024

Sara Carter Staff

In November, president-elect Donald Trump announced on social media that he would impose a 25% tariff on all products from Canada and Mexico if they do not take an active role in containing illegal immigration as well as the level of illicit drugs entering into the United States.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Trump at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, after which the Canadian government vowed to secure the border. “We got, I think, a mutual understanding of what they’re concerned about in terms of border security,” Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, who accompanied Trudeau at Mar-a-Largo, said of the meeting in an interview with Canadian media. “All of their concerns are shared by Canadians and by the government of Canada.”

“We talked about the security posture currently at the border that we believe to be effective, and we also discussed additional measures and visible measures that we’re going to put in place over the coming weeks,” LeBlanc continued. “And we also established, Rosemary, a personal series of rapport that I think will continue to allow us to make that case.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation reports the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is preparing to beef up its immigration enforcement capabilities by hiring more staff, adding more vehicles and creating more processing facilities, in the chance that there is an immigration surge sparked by Trump’s presidential election victory. The moves are a change in direction from Trudeau’s public declaration in January 2017 that Canada was a “welcoming” country and that “diversity is our strength” just days after Trump was sworn into office the first time.

The Daily Caller notes the differences in response from the Canadian government verses Mexico’s:

Trudeau’s recent overtures largely differ from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has indicated she is not willing to bend the knee to Trump’s tariff threats. The Mexican leader in November said “there will be a response in kind” to any tariff levied on Mexican goods going into the U.S., and she appeared to deny the president-elect’s claims that she agreed to do more to beef up border security in a recent phone call.