Trump’s Tuesday morning Tweet-storm included a rant about Google, calling its search results, “RIGGED.” He claimed the top search engine’s search results were biased against positive stories about him and promoted mostly negative content about his presidency. He went on to claim that Google prioritized CNN’s stories and he even issued a thinly-veiled threat that the “very serious situation-will be addressed!”
Trump’s tweet
I find it sad that America is forced to take his often senseless, knee-jerk reactionary tweets seriously but this one I felt contained a bit of substance. While the news buzzed with the typical back and forth from both sides, I saw something deeper. Trump is privy to the best intelligence America has to offer. I find it hard to believe he simply Googled “Trump News,” saw the results and ranted on Twitter. I’m sure he at minimum consulted a government expert, who confirmed that, indeed, most of the stories in a Google search about him were actually negative.
Google designed their algorithms to, in their words, to “…assess your searches and the results in finer detail to make our services work better for you.” If making bad stories about Trump easy to access is, “working better for us” Google searchers, then positive ones must be, in the eyes of Google, their search engine functioning worse. Google results being negative are likely because the majority of Google searchers aren’t seeking positive content. Although there are other search engines, Google, is by far the most used by Americans, having 74.52% of all searches and 93% of mobile phone and tablet searches. To write off Trump’s revealing statement as another rant would be like walking past a crisp $20 bill sitting on the curb. The Blue Wave could be a Blue-Tsunami or, “BLU-NAMI,” if I may coin the term.