Former President Donald Trump has urged his supporters to “go after” Meta and Google amid allegations that the big tech companies “censored” information about his assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last month.
“It will be nearly impossible for them to find photos or any information about this heinous act,” Trump posted on his social platform, The Truth Society, on Tuesday morning. “Here we go again, another attempt to rig the election! !! ! Follow META and GOOGLE and let them know we are being tougher this time.
Before Trump filed his complaint, X users noticed that a photo of Trump pumping his fist in triumph after surviving an assassination attempt was incorrectly flagged as “doctored” on Facebook. Google also came under criticism from Republican supporters after users noticed that its “autocomplete” feature failed to suggest the outcome of an assassination attempt, even though users prompted it to “conduct an assassination attempt on Tru.”
Both platforms deny any malicious intent. Meta says their fact-checking filter has
Originally applied to an altered photo showing agents smiling as Trump helped him walk off a stage at a campaign rally after he was shot. The filter was incorrectly applied to real photos, and a spokesperson said the bug has been fixed. Google noted that their filters are designed to prevent suggested searches from encouraging political violence and are working on improving autocomplete functionality for keeping up with the latest news.
Still, several people in Silicon Valley were skeptical of the platforms’ response, cheering the message that Trump was pursuing Meta and Google.
“Tech people no longer search on Google,” Balaji Srinivasan, an investor and former chief technology officer at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, wrote late Wednesday. “This isn’t just censorship. It’s terrible.
Srin Swasan did not respond wealth’A request for comment was requested at press time.
Elon Musk, who owns X and has repeatedly endorsed Trump, posted on Wednesday that he “just Googled ‘Trump rally’ and Kamala was the top result!”
A wealth The reporter used incognito mode to type “Trump rally” on Chrome, and the first thing that popped up was a suggestion for “Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta.” However, every article in the carousel mentioned “Trump” and “rally” in the title. Next in the carousel is “Trump Rally in Pennsylvania.”
Google’s communications team wrote in the X thread that their goal is to help people get the most relevant results from their queries.
“These tags are automatically generated based on relevant news topics and will change over time,” the team wrote. “They also span the political spectrum: For example, a search for ‘Kamala Harris’ will show trending stories tagged ‘Donald Trump’ because many articles cover both men.”
Google CEO Sundar Pinchai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have not yet endorsed candidates in the 2024 presidential race.
Still, Musk hasn’t responded of wealth Request for Comment – took advantage of the situation to X’s advantage and posted that his platform outperformed Facebook and Instagram.
However, this has nothing to do with the competition between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Musk. Musk’s comments crystallized an unusually tense election season in Silicon Valley, filled with surprising endorsements and vitriolic X debates. Over the past few weeks, billionaire venture capitalists, startup founders and high-profile tech celebrities have been dividing political camps, spending millions of dollars vying to influence November’s presidential election.
Here’s a look at who Silicon Valley’s biggest names are rooting for.
donald trump supporters
Many of the tech leaders who support Trump are also leaders in the cryptocurrency space. This is because Trump, who just attended the Bitcoin Annual Conference in Nashville, has branded himself as the cryptocurrency president. At that meeting, he vowed to make the United States a cryptocurrency “superpower,” fire the SEC chairman, and create a national Bitcoin reserve.
Most cryptocurrency heavyweights support the Republican nominee. Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, co-founders of technology venture capital firm a16z and the world’s largest cryptocurrency and blockchain technology investors, announced their support for Trump on a podcast.
“We think Donald Trump is actually the right choice for small tech companies. I’m sorry, Mom, I know you’re going to be mad at me for this, but we have to do it,” Horowitz said. In the same podcast, Anderson said Democrats’ insistence on regulating cryptocurrencies was what converted him: “My biggest concern is that what we’re seeing in crypto is a harbinger of what’s going to happen in artificial intelligence.”
Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, which has invested heavily in the encryption field, also announced her support for Trump.
The Winklevoss twins, who founded cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, also supported Trump, each donating $1 million to the candidate. Meanwhile, crypto-related political action committees have spent more than $28.5 million supporting crypto-friendly Republicans in congressional races and opposing skeptical ones, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of campaign data released through July 20. Democrats.
On Wednesday night, David Marcus, the co-founder of Diem, a cryptocurrency project launched by Facebook, posted on X that he was “crossing the Rubicon” from being a Democrat to supporting Trump.
Trump also won broad support from other tech leaders. David Sacks, venture capitalist and former PayPal operating officer, co-hosted All-in The podcast organized a fundraiser for Trump that reportedly raised $12 million.
Sequoia Capital’s Sean Maguire previously said wealth After X announced a $300,000 donation to the Trump campaign, he lost friends and “disappointed family.” “But that’s okay, I expected it. The sad thing is that we live in such an extremely polarized time.
Kamala Harris supporters
Several titans of the tech industry are also backing Vice President Kamala Harris, who is on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination.
Investor, LinkedIn and InflectionAI co-founder Reid Hoffman is a longtime Democratic donor and has invested $7 million this year in Future Forward PAC, a leading Democratic super PAC. He also reportedly called friends and donors to get them to join the campaign.
Separately, more than 100 venture capitalists on Wednesday announced their commitment to vote for Harris in November and solicit donations for her presidential campaign.
The group, called VCsforKamala, includes Hoffman, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla; Mark Cuban, the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks; and angel investor Ron Conway.
“We support business, we support the American dream, we support entrepreneurship and we support technological advancement,” the organization said in a statement posted on its website.
More than 500 people signed the VCsforKamala pledge to vote for Harris. They all seem to be venture capitalists, founders or technology leaders.
In addition to venture capital, Harris has received support from Netflix co-founder, former chairman and CEO Reed Hastings, who donated $7 million to her campaign. Aaron Levie, chief executive of content management software company Box, also supports Harris but told Politico that he and other executives are waiting to see the details of Harris’ technology plans before donating to her campaign.
Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former chief operating officer, posted on Instagram that she was “thrilled” to support Harris. Philanthropist Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, announced on CBS’ morning show that she would support the vice president because she has an “inspiring vision for America.” Her ex-husband said he did not support anyone because he was “closely associated with foundations that work with any government.”
However, Melinda French-Getz said Harris has been “outspoken” on topics that are close to her.
“She has believed in women’s reproductive freedom from the beginning of her career, but that belief was overturned during previous administrations. She knows what society is facing now. She is on paid family medical leave. She supports care…she Having been outspoken on these topics, I think she is a woman of our time,” Gaetz said.
