Donald Trump lashed out at Facebook, Google and Twitter over the weekend, claiming they were “burying” negative news about Hillary Clinton.
Trump took to Twitter on Sunday morning to let everyone know he was mad about something. Two weeks ago, he yelled about Saturday Night Live‘s “hit job” — now it’s a vague proclamation that lumps Facebook, Google and Twitter under the umbrella of “dishonest media.”
According to Trump, the tech companies are guilty of suppressing news relating to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
He doesn’t get into specifics, so it’s not entirely clear what he believes has been buried, or how. A quick glance at Google News shows that the investigation — reignited on Friday when FBI director James Comey pointed to newly unearthed emails — is the top result as of 11:30 a.m. ET on Sunday morning.
IMAGE: GOOGLE
Twitter doesn’t surface information in quite the same way as Google, but both #Election2016 and the Clinton probe are at the top of the site’s “Featured Tweets” section as of Sunday morning.
IMAGE: TWITTER
Facebook’s own “What’s Trending” section may or may not include mention of the email probe; it’s a difficult thing to track since the content of that section is tied to the current user’s account.
Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson pointed Mashable toward the below CNNtweet, in which correspondent Brian Stelter addressed the Trump tweet and tried to deduce its meaning on Reliable Sources.
Google News doesn’t change rankings of stories to influence user opinion, a source at Google told Mashable, nor does it tweak rankings related to political candidates.
Mashable also reached out to Twitter for comment, but the company did not respond.
The same cannot be said of the Twitter community at large. Trump’s tweet quickly garnered a slew of responses from users who were too happy to point out that the targets of the presidential hopeful’s ire are not, in fact, “media” companies (something Facebook stressed as recently as five days ago).