On Monday night, the Trumpist duo known as Diamond and Silk appeared on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show to repeat their claim that the tech companies are burying their videos. “I am not for big government, but I really do believe that the government should step in and really check this out,” Lynette Hardaway, one half of Diamond and Silk, told Dobbs.

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Diamond adds that "somebody's going to have to step in and take a look at this here." Watching the program this morning, Trump tweets, "This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!" pic.twitter.com/YvydCbLvQG — Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) August 28, 2018

The next morning, Donald J. Trump, American President, fired off a pair of tweets saying Google search results are “rigged” against “him and others.” He also dropped a statistic from a report on the conservative website PJ Media that claims 96 percent of Google results for “Trump News” come from “National Left-Wing Media.”

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Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, 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? 96% of.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

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....results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. 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! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

As is the case with most matters—with the exceptions of feuding and publicity—the President is way out of his depth here. And yet because of these tweets, large mechanizations of government and business have lurched into action. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, said the administration is “taking a look” at whether Google and other tech companies should be regulated. Google responded to the president’s tweets in a statement in which it insisted the company’s algorithms have no political agenda.

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Breaking: Google statement in response to Trump tweet pic.twitter.com/QqMuxQ7gkj — Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) August 28, 2018

All of this because of Diamond and Silk talking to Lou Dobbs.

Naturally, Trump’s tweets seem to belie his expertise on Google. The No. 1 result on Google for “Trump news” is Fox News, which the president definitely does not consider fake. And of course Trump is confusing “fake news” with news outlets that report critically about him.

I spoke with Alex Egan, who manages Esquire’s search efforts, about the president’s claims. Alex is a bonafide Google expert. “Google is trying to do everything it can to prevent fake news,” she told me, “which is why it’s harder than ever for sites that are less authoritative than CNN, The New York Times, etc. to rank for hard news.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaks at a conference in 2017. Justin Sullivan Getty Images

There are a number of factors, known and unknown, for how Google ranks authority and, as many publishers will attest, figuring this out can be maddening. (That’s partly what Alex Egan does.) But much of a site’s authority boils down to how many other sites are linking to it. So the sites that Trump and the PJ Media report say Google is suppressing are considered less authoritative and, possibly, fake. In other words, they’re not real news outlets.

Google and other tech companies, like Facebook and Apple, have taken steps in recent weeks to quash Alex Jones and his company, InfoWars, which spread ridiculous and often dangerous conspiracy theories, including his long-held belief that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was staged and that those children did not die. (President Trump has appeared on his show and praised Jones "amazing" reputation.) The platforms have pulled many of his shows, citing hate speech.

Trump does seem to have landed on an important topic (broken clock and all that). The Big Tech companies—including Facebook, Google and Amazon—need some government oversight. Scott Galloway, a professor and writer, made the case for regulating these companies in an article for Esquire earlier this year. About Google, he wrote:

Google … now commands a 92 percent share of a market, Internet search, that is worth $92.4 billion worldwide. That’s more than the entire

advertising market of any country except the U. S. Search is now a larger market than the following global industries:

• paper and forest products: $81 billion

• construction and engineering: $79 billion

• real estate management and development: $76 billion

• gas utilities: $58 billion

How would we feel if one company controlled 92 percent of the global construction and engineering trade? Or 92 percent of the world’s paper and forest products? Would we worry that their power and influence had breached a reasonable threshold, or would we just think they were awesome innovators, as we do with Google?

So the idea of regulating Google, as Trump is suggesting in his tweet, is not without its merits. But hauling an American company before congress and subjecting it to costly and distracting lines of questioning about whether it’s suppressing what are probably actual fake news websites because the President of the United States believes conspiracy theories is dumb and dangerous. What might happen is an overcompensation on Google's part. Much like Facebook allowing Actual Fake News and conspiracy theories to take root on its platform, Google might start surfacing less authoritative sites in results, which will only lead to further splintering and decay of our shared reality. And that's exactly the kind of environment where authoritarians thrive.

Michael Sebastian Michael Sebastian was named editor-in-chief of Esquire in June 2019 where he oversees print and digital content, strategy and operations.

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