Donald Trump has been taking on the media for seemingly his entire life, and his time as president has been no different.
The “fake news media” has easily been Trump’s biggest target of derision during his time in office, deeming it “the enemy of the people” on a number of occasions and again as recently as Aug. 19.
“The Failing New York Times wrote a story that made it seem like the White House Councel had TURNED on the President, when in fact it is just the opposite – & the two Fake reporters knew this. This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People. So bad for America!” Trump proclaimed.
The Failing New York Times wrote a story that made it seem like the White House Councel had TURNED on the President, when in fact it is just the opposite – & the two Fake reporters knew this. This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People. So bad for America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2018
But he’s also been taking on social media giants like Twitter — his personal platform of choice for communicating with the masses — for so-called “shadow banning” conservative voices.
“Twitter is ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints,” Trump tweeted early in the morning on July 26.
Twitter “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2018
Shadow banning is discreet way of hiding contributions by making them invisible or hidden away so no one can see them. For example, tweets from conservative voices might not show up through search features on Twitter.
A recent report from Vice says Twitter was shadow banning prominent Republican voices like Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, several conservative congressmen and Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman.
The same report says Democrats were not being shadow banned in the same way.
A Twitter spokesman of course denied the claims in an email to CNBC.
“As we have said before, we do not ‘shadowban.’ We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box, and shipping a change to address this. The profiles, Tweets and discussions about these accounts do appear when you search for them. To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgments based on political views or the substance of Tweets.”
In consecutive predawn tweets Tuesday, Trump took aim at Google for a claim similar to shadow banning, except this time he says the search engine giant is simply blocking positive news stories about his administration from showing up in searches.
“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CCN 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!”
….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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
Larry Kudlow, a top economic adviser to the president, told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday that the administration is “taking a look” to determine whether Google searches should be regulated by the government.
“We’ll let you know,” he said. “We’re looking into it.”
Google released a statement just before lunch Tuesday, saying its searches are designed to deliver the most relevant answers to a query.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology. Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment,” the statement read.
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