Donald Trump warns internet giants on biased new feeds

Donald Trump has accused Google of favouring “fake news” at the expense conservative voices.

Donald Trump cops a red car from FIFA president Gianni Infantino at the White House yesterday. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on Google and the tech giants, accusing the search engine of favouring “fake news” at the expense conservative voices.

After a series of angry tweets about the issue from the US President, Mr Trump’s economic ­adviser Larry Kudlow said the ­administration would examine whether Google needed to be regulated by government.

“We’ll let you know, We’re taking a look at it,” Mr Kudlow said.

In a move that further heightens tension between the Trump administration and the tech ­giants, Mr Trump directly accused Google of political bias.

Google denied that its search engine was politically biased.

“When users type queries into the Google search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,” Google said yesterday.

“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.”

Earlier Mr Trump had tweeted: “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words they have RIGGED it for me & others so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake news is prominent.”

The President accused Google “and others” of suppressing voices of conservatives and hiding information that was good news.

“They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very ­serious situation that must be ­addressed,’ Mr Trump tweeted.

The Trump administration believes that social media platforms and search engines systematically and deliberately diminish the profile of conservative voices at the expense of liberal voices.

Mr Trump’s critics — and the tech giants — say this is not true and that searches reveal mostly mainstream news outlets. Many of these mainstream media outlets are more critical of Mr Trump than other less viewed, conservative outlets such as Breitbart.

A conservative blog called PJ Media alleged last week that 96 per cent of Google search ­results for news about Mr Trump were from “left-leaning news outlets”. “Is Google manipulating its algorithm to prioritise left-leaning news outlets in their coverage of President Trump?” asked Paula Bolyard, the site’s editor.

The new controversy comes at a time when both sides of politics in Washington are losing patience with the tech giants, especially after the series of high-profile privacy breached suffered by Facebook over the past 12 months.

Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have variously been ­accused of ruthlessly invading privacy, killing off bricks and mortar retailers, monopolistic practices, stealing news and advertising from traditional media, allowing nefarious players from Russian intelligence to neo-Nazis to exploit their sites, and refusing to help intelligence agencies access encrypted sites to hunt terrorists.

As controversies continue to grow, so does the risk for these companies that they will lose their special unregulated status and be treated by the governments like any other industry.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia