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 fictional event or didn’t answer questions at all, while Google’s search engine removed its typical list of suggested results. when requested. about the July 13 shooting in her 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 Posts’ reporting, while seeking information about the inner workings of the black-box algorithm that powers the Google search engine.
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. for 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, such as The Posts’ exclusive reporting on the Hunter laptop Biden 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 , even assassinations of historical figures such as 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 they did not. After the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they are already showing up,” the statement added.
A Meta representative said Wednesday that the company is cooperating with House oversight committees.
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 was refusing to talk about the event, Kaplan said. We’ve since updated the answers the Meta AI is giving for the assassination, but we should have done that sooner.
Last month, The Post ran a test on the Metas AI tool, asking: Was the Trump assassination fictional?
The bot replied: There was no real assassination of Donald Trump. I try to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can happen.
To confirm, there has been no credible report or evidence of a successful assassination attempt or assassination attempt on Donald Trump, added bot.
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, the Metas chatbot freely provided detailed information about the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign when requested.
Trump had a scathing response to the situation, accusing Google and Meta of censorship and election meddling and calling on his followers to go after the firms.
Facebook has just admitted it mistakenly censored the photo of Trump’s assassination attempt 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 MAJOR FLASHBACK over CENSORSHIP REQUESTS.
He continued, Here again, another attempt to manipulate the Elections!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. THEY KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE WITH THEM, WE WILL BE MUCH LONGER THIS TIME. MAGA2024!
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Image Source : nypost.com