US president Donald Trump lashed out at Google on Tuesday, accusing the internet search engine of prioritising negative news stories about him.
In two tweets, Mr Trump accused the company of selectively promoting stories from the “national left-wing media”.
“They have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?” he tweeted at around 5am, noting that 96 per cent of results on “Trump news” were negative.
A second tweet read: “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!”
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Pressed on the issue later in the Oval Office, Mr Trump said Google was "taking advantage of a lot of people". He also widened his attack to include social media firms Facebook and Twitter, which he is a regular user of.
“If you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it,” he told reporters at a press event with FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
‘Complaints’
Noting that he had "literally thousands of complaints" coming into the White House, he said that Google, Twitter and Facebook were "really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.
“It is not fair to large portions of the population.”
Mr Trump’s comments represent his most stinging attack yet on social media companies as he usually rails against what he describes as the “fake news” mainstream media.
Separately on Tuesday, US defence secretary James Mattis warned that the US may not be willing to halt future military exercises on the Korean Peninsula, the latest sign that dialogue between North Korea and Washington has stalled.
Speaking at a press briefing at the Pentagon, Mr Mattis hinted that some US joint military exercises with South Korea, which were halted after the Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un in June, could resume.
“As you know we took the step to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit. We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” he said.
Mr Trump announced on twitter last Friday that he was cancelling secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s scheduled trip to North Korea this week.
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