Washington Post

The White House will host top tech companies to discuss the rise of violent online extremism on Aug 9, marking the Trump administration’s first major engagement on the issue days after a mass shooting in TX left 22 people dead. The gathering will include “senior administration officials along with representatives of a range of companies,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. He did not name which companies would attend.

Technology experts are skeptical of President Donald Trump’s call for Internet companies to work with law enforcement and the Justice Department to develop tools to detect mass shootings before they even happen. They say the Trump administration has an especially bad track record on addressing violence on social media -- and has ignored major opportunities to take action on this front both at home and with other countries.

President Donald Trump accused Google of favoring negative news stories about him in the 2016 presidential election, apparently in response to a report on Fox News. In a series of three tweets on Aug 6, President Trump said he had met in the Oval Office with Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, who told him the company didn’t boost Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, wouldn’t interfere with the 2020 election, and wasn’t involved with the Chinese military. “We are watching Google very closely!” Trump said in a tweet on Aug 6.