As we told you over the weekend, many people were noticing that the autofill feature on Google wouldn't not include a certain name for particular searches. Basically the search feature seemed to be hiding results about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump:
lol Google pic.twitter.com/6CYXybecz7
— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) July 28, 2024
You can still even try different variations of similar searches and the autofill will not include anything about Trump getting shot just over two weeks ago.
The disinformation industrial complex has been working overtime recently: https://t.co/8l9jlgnKGr
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 28, 2024
Google Communications has responded, and their statement addresses this post in particular:
REPORT: Google suggestion includes all U.S. presidential assassinations and attempts—except Trump’s. pic.twitter.com/HBv6qG7Q5q
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) July 26, 2024
Try not to roll your eyes at the response from Google Communications.
Here it is:
There was no manual action taken. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event. We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course,…
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) July 28, 2024
Google's full statement if you can't see it all above:
Recommended
There was no manual action taken. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event. 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 Federalist's Mollie Hemingway spotted a whole lotta BS in that explanation:
This note is both non-sensical and terrifying.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 29, 2024
1) The autocomplete works for ALL SORTS of other instances of political violence and
2) what dystopic Stalinist hellhole is it to "protect" people from learning facts about the assassination attempt on the Republican candidate? https://t.co/gBt8MIQRGY
Creating a "Stalinist hellhole" seems to be the end goal for so many on the Left.
Um. Was the Doolittle Raid a peaceful protest?
— Sandy 〽️ (@RightGlockMom) July 29, 2024
How about the "Fiery but mostly peaceful" riots? pic.twitter.com/v5VBBioktU
🤥🤥🤥🤥 pic.twitter.com/4ai97lUyfJ
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) July 29, 2024
Even North Korean state media might tell them to dial the level of propaganda down just a notch.
What a load of crap! We don’t need Google’s ‘protections’. We need the TRUTH! Try providing THAT for a change! https://t.co/QuNn3PQ4mo
— Maggie Speaks (@MaggiesMusings) July 29, 2024
So Autocomplete doesn’t consider other presidential assassinations/attempts as political violence? Only Trumps is? That doesn’t pass the smell test. https://t.co/3kG3C1unCZ
— Conservative Patriot (@usacit1970) July 29, 2024
A lot of this doesn't pass the smell test, and as of the time this story was published Google has changed nothing.
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