Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump responded to reports that Big Tech giants Meta and Google allegedly censored information relating to the July 13 attempt on his life.
Meta is the owner of the popular social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. Its cofounder, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, serves as its CEO and is its plurality owner controlling a 13.68% equity stake of the trillion-dollar company.
“Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump ‘attempted assassination photo,’ and got caught,” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social Tuesday morning. “Same thing for Google.”
He wrote that the Big Tech companies “made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act.”
Trump was of course referring to his brush with death when a bullet fired by a would-be assassin came mere centimeters away from likely ending his life at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally earlier this month. Trump has attributed his survival to “the grace of almighty God.”
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Later in his TRUTH post, Trump pointed out that Meta and Google are both facing “BIG BACKLASH” from critics who accuse them of engaging in censorship. Trump added that the platforms’ actions amounted to “another attempt at RIGGING THE ELECTION.”
“GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE,” the former president continued using all capital letters. “LET THEM KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE TO THEM, WILL BE MUCH TOUGHER THIS TIME.”
CatholicVote reported Monday that Meta had “wrongly flagged the iconic post-assassination attempt picture of [Trump] as ‘altered’ on its platforms Facebook and Instagram.”
CatholicVote continued:
The indisputably genuine July 13 picture taken by Associated Press (AP) Chief Photographer Evan Vucci shows Trump with blood on his face from a bullet wound and holding his fist out in front of an American flag.
Vucci took the picture mere seconds after a would-be assassin tried to take the former president’s life.
Per screenshots taken by various users, “fact checkers” on Meta’s platforms placed a warning under postings of the picture stating: “Altered Photo.”
The warning message continued: “The same altered photo was reviewed by independent fact-checkers in another post.”
A Meta spokeswoman later issued an apology, stating that the flagging was done by “mistake.”
Over the weekend, a chorus of critics called out Google for allegedly censoring the search suggestions for the assassination attempt on Trump.
Again from CatholicVote:
Multiple accounts posted pictures of their search query “assassination attempt on tr,” “assassination attempt on trum,” and other similar phrases.
In all cases, no suggestions for “assassination attempt on Trump” were shown. Instead, Google’s top search result refers to the 1950 assassination attempt on then-President Harry S Truman.
Google has denied allegations of censorship and instead asserted that it was attempting to mitigate political violence. On the other hand, a U.S. Senator and Missouri’s Attorney General expressed concern and stated that they will look into the situation.
The allegations against Google sparked a flurry of media coverage highlighting various concerns with multiple Big Tech companies and their platforms.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning that his office has “secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law.”
Paxton noted that the “settlement is the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single State and the largest privacy settlement an Attorney General has ever obtained.”
