Trump attacks Google, Twitter and Facebook, plus Tiffany’s good news | Advertising

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for “Ad Age” under “Skills” in the Alexa app. What people are talking about today: President Trump sent a zinger on Twitter at 5:24 a.m. yesterday accusing Google news search results of being rigged against conservatives, himself in particular. People who search Google for “Trump News” get results that are “RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,” he wrote, indulging in his pre-dawn Twitter habit. Again. (“Tweets, lies and threats. It’s morning in America,” writes Ad Age’s Roberta Bernstein.)

Google retorted that its searches weren’t politically biased. Meanwhile, Trump widened his target. “I think that Google, and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful,” he said, as quoted by Reuters. “It’s not fair to large portions of the population.” Trump’s top economic adviser said the administration is “taking a look” at possible Google regulation, a remark that raised concerns about free speech. One question: Was the administration already looking at that before Trump’s 5:24 a.m. tweet? Or was this a spur-of-the-moment, go-with-the-flow thing?

Notable reactions: Wired editor Nicholas Thompson commented on Trump’s use of the words “Trump News.” “By tweeting the specific search term, which will then get written about in a million news stories, he’s going to change what the algorithm shows. Simpler than regulation!” he wrote.

Continue reading at AdAge.com