Google’s search results for “U.S. presidents” omitted former President Joe Biden from the list on Thursday morning according to user reports, joining a recent wave of criticisms aimed at giant tech companies and their management of political content across their platforms.
The search issue — which Newsweek reports was resolved around 4 a.m. ET — temporarily displayed President Donald Trump as having served consecutive terms, with Biden’s presidency absent from the chronological listing that included other presidents such as Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
This development lands during a period of significant turbulence in the big tech and social media landscape. TikTok users have recently reported difficulties accessing anti-trump content following the platform’s brief shutdown and subsequent resumption of service. Meanwhile, Meta has faced user reports about Instagram allegedly restricting searches for Democrat-related terms, receiving “sensitive content” warnings when searching for certain political terms. In response, Meta told the BBC that these issues stem from “an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum.”
The recent turbulence has sparked varying user responses. A week-long “Lights Out Meta” boycott campaign, initiated by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, encourages users to temporarily cease using Meta’s platforms from January 19-26. Elsewhere, more than 100 Reddit communities with combined totals of millions of users, have implemented bans against sharing X content.
None of the platforms have confirmed that any of the user reports and complaints were regarding purposeful action to intentionally censor or block content. Meta, for example, maintains that its content filtering affects “hashtags across the political spectrum,” while TikTok attributes reported access issues to temporary instability during its recent service restoration.
The current wave of backlash also coincides with notable shifts in social media content moderation approaches. Meta in particular has faced widespread scrutiny for announcing the end of its fact-checking program in the United States, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that external moderators were “too politically biased,” as the company describes a return to what it terms “free expression.”
Big Tech’s Increased Scrutiny
Monday’s presidential inauguration in particular highlighted new dynamics between tech companies and political figures. Industry leaders including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai attended the ceremony, joining numerous other industry executives.
With tech executives assuming more visible positions in political contexts and platforms implementing revised approaches to content moderation, these technical incidents — whether temporary anomalies or alleged systematic changes — are generating increased attention from users and industry observers. Whether these developments could signal a broader shift in how digital platforms approach their role in political discourse — a change that could have lasting implications for online information access and distribution in the future – remains to be seen.
