All Sides: Trump Threatens Google Over Alleged Biased Search Results

[steven36]

From the Right By Lukas Mikelionis | Fox News

 

 

President Trump threatened Google in an early Tuesday morning tweet, saying the Internet giant’s search engine is biased against conservative media and promised that the situation “will be addressed.”

“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?” Trump wrote in a tweet.

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...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

“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!” he added. 

....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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

Google, however, pushed back and denied ranking results to "manipulate" political sentiment. 

"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," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "Search is 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. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

 

This is the first time Trump raised the issue of Google search engine’s alleged bias. Just weeks ago Trump attacked other tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook for silencing non-left wing voices, saying “too many voices are being destroyed” and pledged to address the problem as well.

 

Facebook and Twitter have been under fire for allegedly censoring conservative and Republican accounts on their platforms, while taking a more lenient approach to liberal and left-wing users.

 

The president previously pointed out to the problem of so-called “shadow banning” on social media platforms, where users while technically not banned but their posts aren’t visible to most users, saying the practice was “discriminatory and illegal.”

 

Earlier this summer, California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes said Google and other tech giants could face hearings over alleged anti-conservative bias.

 

“I think what the American people need to understand is there is bias against conservatives and Republicans all across this country,” he said during an interview on Fox Business. “And now as you see things, it’s always been there with newspapers and television, but now as you see it getting into the internet it's one of the challenges we have with millennials.”

 

His remarks came after Google came under fire for inadvertently listed “Nazism” as one of the ideologies of the California Republican party. Google immediately fixed the issue after widespread criticism and blamed the search result on “vandalism” on one of its sources.

 

A U.S. House committee announced last week that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other tech executives will appear before the panel on Capitol Hill Sept. 5.

 

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[steven36]

From the Left: Jessica Guynn USA TODAY

 

'Fake social,' 'fake search' are the new 'fake news' as Trump attacks tech ahead of midterms

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Top Silicon Valley executives will get grilled on Capitol Hill next week on how their companies police Russian interference in U.S. elections. Expect some pointed questions on how these companies police political speech, too.

 

Growing allegations that Facebook, Google and Twitter limit the reach of conservative voices and viewpoints on their platforms is the latest political crisis to engulf the technology industry.

 

Over the past year, censorship charges have become a conservative rallying cry, raised in multiple hearings on Capitol Hill. Now the attacks are ratcheting up, with some GOP leaders and now President Trump using the hashtag #stopthebias to target left-leaning Silicon Valley ahead of the November midterm elections.

 

Why? It hits a bull's eye with supporters whose opinion of social media has sunk to the level of mainstream media. A new poll from the Media Research Center conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 65% of self-described conservatives believe that social media companies intentionally censor the political right. Some Republicans have started using bias claims in fundraising pitches.

 

 

"If you're a staunch conservative Trump supporter and don't like CNN, you can switch the channel to Fox. But where do you switch the channel from Facebook or Google?" said Dan Schnur, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications.

 

"Fake social" and "fake search" is now on the tips of conservative tongues the way "fake news" has been for the last few years, reports Axios' Mike Allen. Donald Trump Jr. told Allen that if a right-wing alternative to Facebook existed, he would urge Trump supporters to switch to it.

 

In such a tense, bitterly divided political climate, tech companies are taking these charges seriously. Facebook hired former Republican senator Jon Kyl to consider whether it suppresses conservative voices. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has met with prominent conservatives about bias.

 

More: Trump aide says president weighing regulations on Google search engine that he considers 'rigged'

 

More: Is Facebook too liberal? It pledges to investigate charges it's biased against conservatives

 

More: Twitter accused of political bias in right-wing crackdown

Regulatory threats, donor requests

These defensive measures could help them head off threats of regulation. This week the Trump administration raised the prospect of tightening the screws on Google as a growing number of proposals to regulate big tech make the rounds in Washington. There's not much the White House could do without the cooperation of Congress, but Trump has a knack for normalizing political ideas that were not previously part of the public discussion, political observers say.

 

On Tuesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the Trump administration was "taking a look" at whether Google searches should be monitored by the federal government. Trump seemed to walk back that threat Wednesday. "We’re just going to see,” he said. "You know what we want? Not regulation. Fairness."

 

But on Thursday retiring Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked the Federal Trade Commission to reopen an antitrust investigation into "Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising." The FTC ended a similar probe in 2013 before the big tech backlash in Washington. Google declined to comment.

 

And in a White House interview, Trump told Bloomberg that some people see an "antitrust situation" with Facebook, Google and Amazon, but repeatedly denied to comment on whether he wants to break up these companies. "I mean, look, the conservatives have been treated very unfairly," he said.

 

"The greater the uprising, the more likely there is to be some type of action to create some kind of competitive market in social media that now exists in cable TV," Schnur said. "A generation ago, the morning newspaper and the evening news were seen more as public utilities than as partisan combatants. The people who run these social media companies very badly want to avoid that same fate."

 

This week Trump used his Twitter bullhorn to amplify bias charges. Speaking to reporters at the White House Wednesday, he said Google and other companies "silence a very large part of this country."

As proof, Trump posted a video claiming Google plugged President Obama's State of the Union addresses on its home page but not his. Google denied it, backed up by screenshots showing it had promoted the speech.

 

The controversy touched off Tuesday after Trump sent early morning tweets accusing Google of manipulating search results to spread anti-Trump news and suppress pro-Trump news. Later Tuesday Trump told reporters that in favoring liberal views Google, Facebook and Twitter are "treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful." Google responded that "search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology." Facebook and Twitter declined to comment.

 

More: Trump says Google ignored his State of the Union address; Google disagrees

More: These are the liberal memes Iran used to target Americans on Facebook

 

The Trump campaign shared the president's tweets with supporters to drum up donations. House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who for months has slammed Silicon Valley for bias, is using the charged issue in fundraising appeals. He's also pushing the #StopTheBias hashtag that the president tweeted this week.

 

The president is taking aim at the very platforms credited with his political rise to the Oval Office. Even today, he's the single biggest spender on Facebook political ads, according to a recent study by New York University.

 

But this week's gripes about Google and social media were singularly effective for Trump, abruptly changing the conversation from one of the darkest periods of his presidency — Michael Cohen's plea deal, Paul Manafort's conviction, and Trump's reaction to the death of John McCain.

 

The timing of Trump's attacks couldn't be worse for tech companies. On Wednesday lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee will question Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a hearing focused on Russian interference in U.S. elections, almost one year after Facebook, Google and Twitter first testified before Congress on the meddling. Separately, Dorsey will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

 

The last time lower-level executives appeared before Congress, they were not well received, but the tech companies have a better story to tell this time. They've been aggressively rooting out foreign interference from Russia and Iran on their platforms, working closely with each other as well as security firms, law enforcement and intelligence officials to shut down threats. And after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was taken aback by repeated allegations of conservative censorship during April congressional hearings on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, they are preparing to field those questions, too.

 

With one notable exception. The Senate panel invited Google parent Alphabet CEO Larry Page and offered to accept Google CEO Sundar Pichai, but Google offered Kent Walker, its senior vice president for global affairs and a point person on election interference. 

 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr turned down Google, saying Walker isn't high ranking enough. Google says it has no plans to send anyone else, prompting both parties to criticize the no show. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the Intelligence panel's top Democrat, said Google is making a grave mistake. Senators may hold the hearing with an empty chair.

 

More: Pro-Trump YouTube stars Diamond and Silk demand sit down with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

More: Republicans press social media giants on anti-conservative 'bias' that Dems call 'nonsense'

 

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[steven36]

From the Center:  Ginger Gibson, Susan Heavey  REUTERS

 

White House probes Google after Trump accuses it of bias

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Google’s search engine of promoting negative news articles and hiding “fair media” coverage of him, vowing to address the situation without providing evidence or giving details of action he might take.

Trump’s attack against the Alphabet Inc unit follows a string of grievances against technology companies, including social media Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc, which he has accused of silencing conservative voices, and Amazon.com Inc, which he has said is hurting small businesses and benefiting from a favorable deal with the U.S. Postal Services. He frequently berates news outlets for what he perceives as unfair coverage.

Google denied any political bias, saying in a statement that its search engine is “not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.”

Trump said in several tweets on Tuesday that Google search results for “Trump News” were “rigged” against him because they showed only coverage from outlets like CNN and not conservative publications, suggesting the practice was illegal.

“I think Google is really taking advantage of our people,” Trump said on Tuesday in the Oval Office. “Google, and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory, and they have to be careful. It’s not fair to large portions of the population.”

Facebook declined to comment. Twitter did not comment when asked for a response. In congressional testimony, both companies have denied engaging in partisan censorship.

Neither Trump nor the White House detailed how or under what legal justification they would use to probe Google.

Trump’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, later told reporters that the White House was “taking a look” at Google, saying the administration would do “some investigation and some analysis,” without providing further details.

Earlier this summer, the new Republican chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Joseph Simons, said the agency would keep a close eye on big tech companies that dominate the internet. In a previous investigation, the FTC decided that Google was likely justified in developing a search function that harmed other companies.

In June Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior in the online search and advertising markets.

Congressional sources cautioned that it may be difficult for Trump to find a way to probe Google about news search results, and that Congress is unlikely to pass any applicable laws.

U.S. member of Congress Ted Lieu, a Democrat, said in a tweet directed at Trump that such restrictions on Google would violate the U.S. Constitution: “If government tried to dictate the free speech algorithms of private companies, courts would strike it down in a nanosecond.”

Shares of Alphabet closed down 0.8 percent at $1,245.86.

TRUMP’S CRITICISM OF MEDIA
While the exact science behind Google searches on the internet is kept secret, its basic principles are widely known to be generated with a variety of factors measured by the company’s algorithms.

The factors Google uses to determine which websites appear first in search results include how often that page is linked to on other sites, the use of keywords, the popularity and respectability of the news site, and personal browsing history of the person conducting the search.

Highly trafficked and cited websites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com, two of the most Trump’s most frequent targets, often appear first in search results.

 

Trump’s accusation of bias on the part of Google comes as social media companies have suspended accounts, banned certain users and removed content as they face pressure from the U.S. Congress to police foreign propaganda and fake accounts aimed at disrupting American politics, including operations tied to Iran and Russia.

Companies such as Facebook and Twitter have also been pressed to remove conspiracy driven content and hate speech.

Tech companies have said they do not remove content for political reasons.

Some Republican U.S. lawmakers have also raised concerns about social media companies removing content from some conservatives, and have called Twitter’s chief executive to testify before a House of Representatives panel on Sept. 5.

Earlier this month, Alphabet’s YouTube joined Apple Inc and Facebook in removing some content from Infowars, a website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Jones was also temporarily suspended on Twitter.

 

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[dMog]

pretty strange stuff... indeed.

 

[knowledge-Spammer]

what is real nowdays  not much

have google  said its the russians yet i wait for it ?

[steven36]

54 minutes ago, steven36 said:

But where do you switch the channel from Facebook or Google?

reddit and searx is normally how i do it