Google responded to allegations of “censoring” searches about Donald Trump after Elon Musk falsely claimed the company imposed a “search ban” on the former president. Google attributed the issues to bugs in its autocomplete feature and clarified that it was not censoring or banning search terms. Musk’s tweet, viewed more than 118 million times, prompted Google to publicly address their autocomplete feature. The company explained that people can search for anything regardless of autocomplete suggestions and acknowledged that outdated systems prevented certain searches. Strange autocomplete suggestions for “president donald” were a result of a bug affecting various political figures. Google also debunked conspiracy theories about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump appearing in the same search results, clarifying that they are often mentioned together in news stories. Musk’s post questioning Google’s election interference was ironic given his own controversy for sharing a manipulated video of Kamala Harris. Although Google did not directly reference Musk’s post, the company highlighted past issues with the search feature on X and mentioned that incomplete predictions can occur on various platforms.
