Trump urges supporters to 'go after' Meta and Google for alleged censorship

Former President Trump criticized Meta and Google on Tuesday, claiming they censored searches related to the recent assassination attempt on his life. 

Addressing his supporters, he urged them to "go after" the Big Tech companies.

The Republican presidential candidate highlighted incidents where Meta's AI labeled the assassination attempt as "fictional," Facebook banned a photo of Trump raising his fist post-shooting, and Google's search bar failed to show results about the event.

Both companies denied any bias, attributing the issues to innocent mistakes after The Post contacted them. 

On his platform, Truth Social, Trump rejected these explanations, stating, "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."

Trump further declared, "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!"

Reports surfaced on X of Facebook accounts labeling the image of Trump pumping his fist post-assassination attempt as "altered." 

A Facebook spokesperson admitted to incorrect fact checks being applied to the photo.

Meta's AI software also came under fire for failing to provide accurate information about the incident, while offering results on presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. 

Meta's VP of Global Policy, Joel Kaplan, apologized for the errors, attributing them to AI "hallucinations."

On Monday, Google users noticed the search engine's autocomplete feature did not reference the assassination attempt, instead suggesting results related to the failed assassination of former President Reagan. 

A Google spokesperson stated there was no "manual action taken on these predictions" and assured improvements to their system.