Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) is demanding that Big Tech company Google provide some answers after it was reported that Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign has been manipulating past headlines in news articles from different outlets to use them as search ads.
In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Gooden said this is allowing the Harris campaign to buy ads that "mislead readers by linking to news stories with altered headlines that appear favorable to the vice president."
He called out Google's actions, saying that this is "yet another disturbing example of election interference by the world's largest search engine." He sees the manipulation of news headlines as "a deliberate attempt to mislead voters by falsely suggesting endorsements from major news publications."
An analysis released earlier this week showed that the campaign of Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz changed headlines from different news outlets to generate more favorable results in searches and reposted them as advertisements, labeled as 'sponsored' in Google search results.
Gooden accused the search engine firm of a disturbing track record of implicit bias and election interference that overwhelmingly benefits one political party and warned that if "Google is unable or unwilling to take basic steps to safeguard the integrity of our elections, I will work with my colleagues to use every tool at our disposal to ensure accountability."
The Texas representative also highlighted the tech giant's bias against former President Donald Trump, citing its many attempts to obstruct Trump's ongoing presidential campaign and censor stories about the July 13 assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
He noted examples of the manipulated Google search results, including keywords "President Trump," which returned favorable stories on Harris first and searches for "President Donald" failing to show "Trump" in Autocomplete. (Related: Google executive ADMITS to rigging search results.)
"Google interfered in the 2020 election through the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story," Gooden posted on X. "Now they appear to be interfering through shadow banning Trump-related searches and allowing Kamala Harris to manipulate article headlines."
In a separate social media entry, he said Google must protect the integrity of the upcoming election by implementing clear guidelines to prohibit political campaigns, like the Kamala Harris campaign, from intentionally manipulating results on the platform to mislead voters.
Earlier this month, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found that Google's business practices illegally inhibited competition and violated federal antitrust laws while its anticompetitive practices also resulted in a multi-million-dollar settlement back in December 2023.
Trump warns "Google will pay a big price"
As a reaction to the allegations that the internet giant allowed altered headlines to be used in paid Google ads by the Harris-Walz campaign, Trump has claimed Google will "pay a big price."
In a post on his Truth Social website, the Republican presidential nominee said: "Google is a Crooked, Election Interference Machine. Totally Illegal, they will pay a big price for what they are doing!"
Trump included a link to an article from conservative news outlet Townhall, which claimed the Harris-Walz campaign had been editing headlines and descriptions in paid Google adverts.
The controversy began when several X users posted screenshots showing that typing "assassination attempt on" into Google did not produce auto-complete results for the recent attempt on Trump's life. Instead, the suggestions show names like "Ronald Reagan" and "Bob Marley."
Fortune and Yahoo News reported earlier that when typing "assassination attempt on Trump" in Chrome's incognito mode, no auto-complete suggestions appeared. When "Enter" was pressed, it did bring up news articles about the incident but that could be because of the keywords.
The former president's elder son, Donald Trump Jr. also voiced his concerns on X, stating: "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."
Google denied taking "manual action" on the auto-complete predictions and mentioned that they are "working on improvements" to their auto-complete feature. Addressing the queries about the assassination attempt on Trump, a Google spokesperson explained that their systems have "protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence," which were functioning as intended.
"We're looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon," the spokesperson said. "Our auto-complete systems are dynamic, so predictions will change based on common and trending queries."
Follow TechGiants.news for more stories about Google's election interference efforts.
Watch the video below where Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) accuses Google of not wanting to portray Trump as a hero.
This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.
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