Google has hit back at allegations that it “censored” searches about Donald Trump after Elon Musk falsely claimed the company had placed a “search ban” on the former president. Google explained that the problems were due to bugs in its autocomplete feature. But despite Musk’s tweet being viewed more than 118 million times, it forced the search giant to publicly explain one of its most important features.
“Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is ‘censoring’ or ‘banning’ specific terms,” Google wrote in a series of posts on X. “It’s not happening.”
While Google did not name Musk specifically, the X owner said over the weekend that “Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump.” The claim appeared to be substantiated A search that shows Google suggesting “president donald duck” and “president donald regan” when “president donald” is typed into the search box.
Donald Trump Jr. shared that day It did not show any autocomplete results related to Donald Trump for the search for “assassination attempt”. Both Trump Jr. and Musk accused the company of “meddling in the election.”
Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search has “censored” or “banned” specific terms. This is not happening and we want to set the record straight.
Posts refer to our Autocomplete feature that predicts queries to save you time. Autocomplete…
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) July 30, 2024
In a post on Tuesday, Google explained that people can search for what they want regardless of what appears in the autocomplete suggestions. It added that “built-in safeguards related to political violence” prevented autocomplete from suggesting Trump-related searches and that “those systems are outdated.”
Likewise, the company He said the outlandish proposals for “President Donald” were due to “a mistake that spans the political spectrum.” This has also affected searches for former President Barack Obama and other individuals.
Finally, the company explained that the articles about Kamala Harris appearing in search results for Donald Trump were not due to a shadowy conspiracy, but because the two, who are both actively campaigning for the presidency, are often mentioned in the same news. This may sound like something that should be painfully obvious to anyone who has used the internet, but Musk’s post on X fueled conspiracy theories about Google’s intentions.
Musk’s post questioning whether the search giant meddled in the election was especially ironic given that the owner of X was fired the same weekend. Unlabeled manipulated video of Kamala Harris is a violation of her company’s own policy.
While Google’s statement did not directly reference Musk’s post, the company noted that the X’s search feature has also had problems in the past. “Many platforms, including the one we’re deploying now, will show odd or incomplete predictions at various times,” the company said .
