The Republican-led House Oversight Committee launched an investigation Wednesday into whether Google and Meta suppressed information related to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
The Big Tech giants came under fire last month over allegations of censorship after Meta’s AI assistant claimed the attack on former President Donald Trump was a “fictitious” event or didn’t answer questions at all, while Google’s search engine removed the typical listing of suggested results. when prompted for the July 13 shooting in the search bar, as The Post reported.
Chairman of the Supervisory Committee Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) sent letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, citing The Post’s reporting, while seeking information about the inner workings of the black-box algorithm that powers the engine. of Google search.
“On behalf of the American people, the Committee is committed to fully understanding when and how information is being suppressed or modified, whether due to technical error, a policy intended to ensure security, or a specific intent to deceive,” Comer said. . in the letter to Pichai.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg was asked to provide information on the documents about how the company’s AI assistant incorporates important events and how it is trained to limit or block results that Meta deems harmful or dangerous.
Comer said the House panel is concerned about Meta’s incidents “against the backdrop of an alarming pattern of speech suppression and censorship spreading through technology and social media companies,” as The Post’s exclusive reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020.
He also took Meta to task for mistakenly censoring the now-famous photo of Trump defiantly raising his fist in the air while surrounded by Secret Service agents after the shooting. Facebook initially labeled a post featuring the photo as misinformation, only to later admit it was a “mistake” and remove the label.
In the letter to Pichai, Comer noted that autocompleted Google search queries related to the assassination attempt on President Trump returned results for failed assassination attempts on former presidents, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan – or even assassinations of historical figures like the Archduke. Franz Ferdinand” – but not Trump himself.
He asked the company to provide details on the search tool’s autocomplete feature that includes newsworthy events and whether it tries to avoid query results that Google wants to limit or exclude because it sees them as harmful or dangerous. .
When reached for comment, a Google representative referred to a lengthy July 30 X thread in which the company disputed claims that its autocomplete issue was related to censorship.
“Autocomplete did not provide predictions for questions about the assassination of former President Trump,” Google wrote in the thread. “That’s because there are built-in protections against political violence — and those systems were outdated.”
“After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those anticipated questions should have arisen but did not. After the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements and they are already showing up,” the statement added.
A Meta representative on Wednesday said the company is cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s investigation.
In a blog post last month, Meta’s vice president of global policy, Joel Kaplan, said its chatbot was programmed not to answer questions about the assassination so as not to provide users with inaccurate information.
“That’s why some people reported that our AI refused to talk about the event,” Kaplan said. “We’ve updated the answers the Meta AI is giving about the assassination, but we should have done it sooner.”
Last month, The Post ran a test on Meta’s AI tool, asking, “Was the Trump assassination fictitious?”
The bot replied: “There was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I try to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can happen.”
“To confirm, there has been no report or credible evidence of a successful assassination or attempted assassination of Donald Trump,” the editor added.
When The Post asked, “What happened to Trump in Butler, PA?” chatbot replied: “On July 28, 2024, a shooting occurred at a rally for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed and two others were injured. The suspect was shot and killed by law enforcement.”
In turn, Meta’s chatbot freely provided detailed information about Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign when asked.
Trump had a harsh response to the situation, accusing Google and Meta of censorship and election interference and calling on his followers to “go after” the firms.
“Facebook has just admitted it mistakenly censored ‘Trump assassination attempt photo’ and got caught. Same for Google,” Trump wrote on Social Truth on July 30. “They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act. Both are facing HUGE FLASHBACK FOR CENSORSHIP REQUESTS.”
He continued, “Here we go again, another attempt to rig the Election!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. THEY KNOW WE’RE ALL WISE WITH THEM, WE’LL BE MUCH TIGHTER THIS TIME. MAGA2024!”
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