WASHINGTON: Two tech giants, Alphabet/Google and X (formerly Twitter) are at the center of election interference charges in the US, drawing their leaders, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, into what is already an ugly and rancorous fight between Democrats and Republicans.
While Elon Musk has openly thrown his support behind Trump Republicans, the India-born Pichai was sucked into the battle over the weekend when supporters of the former President found that Google‘s Autocomplete function did not provide information about the assassination attempt on him.
Search of the phrase “the assassination attempt of” produced several other names such as Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy in the autocomplete function but not Trump.
Trump supporters raged about election interference with one Republican lawmaker announcing he would launch an Congressional inquiry into the company that has long been viewed with suspicion by MAGA Republicans.
“Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas asked, with a screengrab that showed a search of “assassination of…” showing up Truman and other names but not Trump.
Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr also lit into Google, saying, “Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable.”
Some Trump supporters went further, suggesting Pichai is helping Kamala Harris because of their common India roots.
“Sundar Pichai Top boss at google is…doing everything in his power to ensure the next president is of India descent,” read one post on X, while another called him a “socialist” who “favors the Marxists who run the DNC” — Democratic National Committee. Trump himself has called Kamala Harris a socialist and a Marxist.
Responding to the assassination search issue, a Google spokesperson explained that its systems “have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” and the company is “working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the head honcho of the social media platform X, has directly and transparently thrown his support behind Trump, purportedly because of, among other things, Democrats’ ultra-liberal policies and “wokeness.”
Amid outrage on the Democratic side, Musk retweeted over the weekend a parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad without disclosing that it was digitally altered, a violation of his own platform’s rules which forbids sharing manipulated media.
The video contained manipulated audio that had Kamala Harris saying she did not “know the first thing about running the country” and is “the ultimate diversity hire.”
Trump supporters gloated about Musk beating the “entire social media apparatus on one post” (which has 129 million views by Monday morning), with one supporter asking, “Who else loves the fact Elon bought this platform?”
Musk himself, with more than 191 million followers, has become a major propagandist for Trump and his MAGA crowd.
Trump supporters have long accused Google of putting its giant thumb on the election scales, including suppressing information about President Biden’s dissolute and scandal-prone son Hunter Biden. Some of them are now directing their ire at Pichai, with one critic pointing to his Indian nationality (although he is now a US citizen) and accusing him of “socialist sensibilities,” although he has not made his political views public.
While Elon Musk has openly thrown his support behind Trump Republicans, the India-born Pichai was sucked into the battle over the weekend when supporters of the former President found that Google‘s Autocomplete function did not provide information about the assassination attempt on him.
Search of the phrase “the assassination attempt of” produced several other names such as Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy in the autocomplete function but not Trump.
Trump supporters raged about election interference with one Republican lawmaker announcing he would launch an Congressional inquiry into the company that has long been viewed with suspicion by MAGA Republicans.
“Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas asked, with a screengrab that showed a search of “assassination of…” showing up Truman and other names but not Trump.
Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr also lit into Google, saying, “Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable.”
Some Trump supporters went further, suggesting Pichai is helping Kamala Harris because of their common India roots.
“Sundar Pichai Top boss at google is…doing everything in his power to ensure the next president is of India descent,” read one post on X, while another called him a “socialist” who “favors the Marxists who run the DNC” — Democratic National Committee. Trump himself has called Kamala Harris a socialist and a Marxist.
Responding to the assassination search issue, a Google spokesperson explained that its systems “have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” and the company is “working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the head honcho of the social media platform X, has directly and transparently thrown his support behind Trump, purportedly because of, among other things, Democrats’ ultra-liberal policies and “wokeness.”
Amid outrage on the Democratic side, Musk retweeted over the weekend a parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad without disclosing that it was digitally altered, a violation of his own platform’s rules which forbids sharing manipulated media.
The video contained manipulated audio that had Kamala Harris saying she did not “know the first thing about running the country” and is “the ultimate diversity hire.”
Trump supporters gloated about Musk beating the “entire social media apparatus on one post” (which has 129 million views by Monday morning), with one supporter asking, “Who else loves the fact Elon bought this platform?”
Musk himself, with more than 191 million followers, has become a major propagandist for Trump and his MAGA crowd.
Trump supporters have long accused Google of putting its giant thumb on the election scales, including suppressing information about President Biden’s dissolute and scandal-prone son Hunter Biden. Some of them are now directing their ire at Pichai, with one critic pointing to his Indian nationality (although he is now a US citizen) and accusing him of “socialist sensibilities,” although he has not made his political views public.