Google search won't autocomplete searches related to Trump assasination attempt | Hacker News Reader

Google search won't autocomplete searches related to Trump assasination attempt

39 pointsavsteele19 comments

"assassination attempt on ..." returns other results but none related to Trump

Ditto on "shooting of ..."

Bing, DuckDuckgo, return a wide range of expected results.

Why would Google remove these? It certainty looks like a deliberate manual removal

Given Google search shows very current results usually I have to think this is a manual action someone took. The reason is probably the same reason all tech companies censor - I mean “moderate” - their platforms. They have no diversity of politics internally and are willing to abuse their monopoly on power. They view their role as telling others what is good for them, rather than being neutral.

Also isn’t it interesting that something as prominent as an assassination attempt took place less than two weeks ago and already it is being buried everywhere and is out of the news cycle?

I think a better explanation for it being out of the news cycle is that it's no longer news, and that there has been no additional information learned since the first 24 hours or so -- other than the Secret Service director resigning, which was briefly news.

Like the public that watches it, "the news" has the attention span of a gnat.

Not sure about this. There have been multiple Congressional hearings that produced continuing nuggets of information, provoking yet more speculation.

And in the past 24 hours ABC had a rather shocking interview with the local police revealing that: "The local SWAT team assigned to help protect former President Donald Trump on July 13 had not had any contact with the Secret Service agents in charge of security before a would-be assassin opened fire, those officers told ABC News. . . . We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened," said Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the SWAT team in Beaver County, Pennsylvania."

This report seems sure to fuel further rounds of speculation concerning the abnormal security arrangements.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/failure-communication-local-...

It doesn't seem weird to me to limit results of such a hot topic, given it is an election year. I sometimes lurk on conservative social media outlets for the laughs and giggles, and after the attempt they were so focused on the fact that he might have been a democratic based on a donation ( despite he unsubscribed from the donors list newsletter shortly after https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-shooter-thomas-crooks-don... ) doesn't really bode well to quench the political turmoil that there is in the us

little edit: on google trends i can search donald trump assassination and have results for the interest, but i can't select smaller scales than 30 days such as 7 days or i'll have a generic error "something went wrong"

It's all fun and games until the monster being created turns on you. Of course, the tech companies would never do that, they're loyal friends who will promote our ideology above all others forever and ever with zero chance of their incentives ever become unaligned with our own. Our monster is our friend, forever and ever! We are safe in its hands for eternity. It would never turn around and choke us when its incentives are realigned.

I didn't mean it was the best idea out there. I just meant, it doesn't seem far fetched to me for a tech company to impose its view on others. i'm just stating, it is not surprising. Perhaps it will avoid for some people to fall in the far right spiral, perhaps it will have no utility. i don't know. For sure, it isn't a good idea if done perpetually and on large scale. On a smaller scale, i have mixed views about it

There's a lot going on. The news outlets are removing their articles about Kamala Harris' conviction record. All sorts of information massaging is going on.

Listen, getting outraged that power protects power does no good. It shows naivete. Of course they'd do this.

even "trump as..." returns no suggested searches which is insane, obviously a manual action

Are you really complaining that limited list of autocomplete does not contain one item you would have expected? This sounds bit like paranoia.

Btw I do not have it in Bing. Maybe they are shilling for John Lennon, Kennedy and Reagan.

To add context.

Yandex, Yahoo, and Bing displays this correctly.

This is intentional on Google's end.

This obvious Yandex astroturfing should stop already.

What makes it obvious or astroturfing at all? Your accusation doesn’t seem in line with HN guidelines.

For that matter, it won't autocomplete "Biden resigns" or "Biden steps down" or "Biden drops out" either.

Or "Kamala Harris campaign" or "Kamala harris president".

Maybe the autocomplete team all got moved to some AI thing and nobody's updating anymore...

The only winning move is not to play.

My bet is they're not doing anything that can be seen as helping Trump winning the elections. Their employee base leans strongly on the left side and their donations reflect it: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...

[flagged]

May be they're just little cautious

It's a conspiracy!!!!

Google is doing this because political content is harder to fact check and they do have initiatives to fight misinformation online. Autocomplete/suggest results are an aggregation of related searches so people could search something false and it shows on autocomplete making a user think a statement is true. Essentially autocomplete can be hijacked generally. Also auto suggest was originally an effort to reduce the number of unique searches which are generally quite high, something like 30%! By funneling people to certain results pages they could increase bids on ads for those results and have an easier time with QC by not having to account for as many completely unique searches. By leaving autocomplete off they actually generate more search intent data around those types of queries which they can do whatever they want with. I’m sure Google can predict a close election better with auto suggest off on political search intent. While I don’t love anything G does, I do think in this case it is a good practice to turn off autocomplete for certain types of news results. If Bing and DDG are showing autocomplete I hope it’s being monitored or those suggestions.

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