Donald Trump has accused Google of rigging search results against him, even suggesting the tech giant could face prosecution for intentionally prioritising damaging stories about the US president.
The president’s claim that 96% of Google News results for “Trump” were from leftwing outlets appears to come from conservative website PJ Media, which made the claim using a classification that that ranks almost every mainstream news outlet – other than Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Mail Online – as leftwing.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Google never reveals how its algorithm works, “partly to stop news organisations from gaming the system in order to boost their ranking” says The Guardian, although it states on its support page that there are “over 200 factors” that feed into the ranking of a web page on its search engine.
Mercedes Bunz, a lecturer in digital technology at Kings College London, told BBC News it was highly unlikely that Google was deliberately ranking news according to political bias.
“Google's news algorithm is optimised for actuality and proximity of an event but it is generally not optimised to look for political orientation. However, it has a tendency to rank web pages higher that a lot of people link to,” she said.
Results are also influenced by “previous browsing and search history, and that may be happening to the president” says The Independent.
Google has looked to alter some of the ways it decides what to show in the wake of complaints about false news, and suggestions that the search results were showing partisan or misleading news sources.
In response to the president’s unsubstantiated claim, Google released a statement saying: “Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s claim of left-wing bias on Google adds to an escalating war pitting the president and his supporters against the mainstream media.
Several tech giants such as Apple and Facebook have opted to remove far-right commentatorss such as Alex Jones of Infowars from their platforms, prompting criticism from Trump that conservatives voices were being shut down.
-
11 extra-special holiday gifts for everyone on your listThe Week Recommends Jingle their bells with the right present
-
‘Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right’ by Laura K. Field and ‘The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare’ by Daniel SwiftFeature An insider’s POV on the GOP and the untold story of Shakespeare’s first theater
-
How to shop smarter with a grocery budgetThe Explainer No more pushing your cart down the aisles on autopilot
-
The Trump administration says it deports dangerous criminals. ICE data tells a different story.IN THE SPOTLIGHT Arrest data points to an inconvenient truth for the White House’s ongoing deportation agenda
-
Trump unveils $12B bailout for tariff-hit farmersSpeed Read The president continues to insist that his tariff policy is working
-
Trump: Losing energy and supportFeature Polls show that only one of his major initiatives—securing the border—enjoys broad public support
-
Is Trump in a bubble?Today’s Big Question GOP allies worry he is not hearing voters
-
Trump’s Comey case dealt new setbackspeed read A federal judge ruled that key evidence could not be used in an effort to reindict former FBI Director James Comey
-
Moscow cheers Trump’s new ‘America First’ strategyspeed read The president’s national security strategy seeks ‘strategic stability’ with Russia
-
Trump’s poll collapse: can he stop the slide?Talking Point President who promised to ease cost-of-living has found that US economic woes can’t be solved ‘via executive fiat’
-
‘These accounts clearly are designed as a capitalist alternative’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
