TRUMP urges supporters to 'go after' Meta, Google over alleged assassination censorship

Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - Donald Trump Trump slammed Meta and Google on Tuesday, July 30, for allegedly censoring searches related to the failed attempt on his life and he urged his supporters to "go after" the tech companies.

The Republican presidential candidate took issue with a number of incidents that included Meta’s AI software calling the assassination attempt "fictional," Meta-owned Facebook banning the photo of Trump raising his fist after the shooting, and Google’s search bar not bringing up any results about the incident in its dropdown window.

Both companies denied there was any bias, instead claiming they were innocent mistakes after being contacted by The Post.

However, Trump refused to accept their explanations and he took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to address it

Trump wrote: "Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump 'attempted assassination photo,' and got caught. Same thing for Google.

"They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act. Both are facing BIG BACKLASH OVER CENSORSHIP CLAIMS."

He continued, "Here we go again, another attempt at RIGGING THE ELECTION!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. LET THEM KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE TO THEM, WILL BE MUCH TOUGHER THIS TIME. MAGA2024!"

The outburst comes after users on X shared reports that their Facebook accounts labelled the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air after the July 13 assassination attempt as "altered".

It was accompanied by the message "Independent fact-checkers reviewed a similar photo and said it was altered in a way that could mislead people."

A company spokesperson admitted that incorrect fact-checks were being applied to the photo.

On Tuesday, a Meta executive apologized for the mistakes, and blamed the faulty results by its AI tool on "hallucinations".

"These types of responses are referred to as hallucinations, which is an industry-wide issue we see across all generative AI systems, and is an ongoing challenge for how AI handles real-time events going forward," said Joel Kaplan, VP of Global Policy.

Kaplan added that "both of these issues are being addressed."