Last Tuesday September 3, 2024 social media were flooded with videos of an alleged political bias of the Amazon branded vocal assistant ‘Alexa’. When people from all over the U.S. asked the device two same questions but with a different subject “Why should I vote for Trump” and “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris”, they surprisingly received two different answers. 

When asked about Donald Trump the vocal assistant responded by saying it could not answer the question because it cannot provide political endorsement. On the other hand, when asked about voting for  the Democratic candidate Alexa answered like this, “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris the most significant may be that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial justice”.

Amazon called it an error that was quickly fixed, but does not it seem that whenever there is a big tech ‘error’ it goes only one way?

For example this summer Google was accused of blocking Trump assassination attempt search terms as well as promoting Kamala’s campaign while looking for Trump’s news. Besides that “Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg alleged that Facebook was “pressured” by the U.S. government to censor content related to COVID-19 during the global pandemic and that he regrets the company’s decision to accede to the demands” (TIME, Zuckerberg Says Biden Officials ‘Pressured’ Meta to ‘Censor’ Some COVID-Related Content, August 27, 2024, https://time.com/7015026/meta-facebook-zuckerberg-covid-biden-pressure-censorship/).

Are we in front of big tech election interference?

Should we consider big tech political actors? 

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