- President Donald Trump vowed to address Google allegedly using search results to show "Fake News Media" in a bid to suppress conservative voices in a manner he called "very dangerous."
- Trump has previously called out Twitter for "shadow banning" prominent conservatives, saying the practice was "illegal" and his administration would look into it.
- As Google search represents a product from the Alphabet Company, a publicly traded company, it's unclear how the US government could address or direct its largely automated service to behave differently.
President Donald Trump vowed to address Google allegedly using search results to show "Fake News Media" in a bid to suppress conservative voices in a manner he called "very dangerous."
From Trump's Twitter on Tuesday morning:
"Google search results for "Trump News" shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on "Trump News" are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!"
Trump has previously called out Twitter for "shadow banning" prominent conservatives, saying the practice was "illegal" and his administration would look into it.
Trump's 96% figure appears to come from a PJMedia, a conservative opinion blog that wrote on Saturday a blog which used unscientific methods to estimate that 96% of Trump news Google search results come from liberal media outlets.
The US media has long stood accused of a generally liberal bias by the Republican party, and the most read and viewed US media platforms excluding Fox News and the Wall Street Journal all consistently rank mildly liberal by independent media reviewers such as the Columbia Journalism Review.
As Google search represents a product from the Alphabet Company, a publicly traded company, it's unclear how the US government could address or direct its largely automated service to behave differently.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Get the latest Google stock price here.