19 ms·

Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

918 points by pflenker 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago
Love tech in general but this new psy ops style of leadership that is becoming popular in the west makes me uneasy. Obviously politicians will spin things as always but the tech leveraged version of that is a little ominous
sincerely 7y ago
This is actually fascinating (even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders). He did the same thing in June where he gave a completely baffling interview [1] about how his hobby was painting models of buses out of used fruit crates. But people suspected [2] then that it might be a similar strategy, to monopolize the results for "boris johnson bus" searches. I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ [2] https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-buses-to-manipulat-1835903361 https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-bus...
- vfc1 7y ago
  There is a much simpler explanation. It's actually these cheap news websites engineering articles targetting Boris Johnson popular terms (like Model or Bus), in order to generate clicks and advertising revenue.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    But Johnson still seems to deliver suitable quotes on cue. As much as I prefer explanations that involve less assumed cooperarion between actors, I don't see how yours can hold up in this case.
    - vfc1 7y ago
      These websites have money to gain for writing these articles targetting SEO keywords on things Boris Johnson says or does. They will pick up on any term for which they can easily write an article and run with it to get ad clicks. I don't think Boris Johnson even has to do anything to make this happen, even though he obviously has something to gain in terms that these articles turn the public attention from these issues. I mean this can be applied to literally almost anything he does or says. At worst, he might be intentionally adding to his speech terms that are easier to apply this technique to.
- maybetho 7y ago
  Maybe they are? Devin Nunes went on a ramble the other day rather than discuss Trump. It’s to boost the signal of nonsense? So nation states are pretty much at Orwell level? “Gobbledygook & toot pickles, primrose!” The idiocracy ejaculated! as they launched the nukes.
- StaticAtom 7y ago
  Makes me wonder what Jean-Claude Junker, head of the EU, is hiding now when he came out with the bizarre statement "he did not have an erotic relationship with the Irish Backstop". Anyone know?
- fangorn 7y ago
  "boris" "johnson" "fruit" hm, was it create or... cake?
- rkachowski 7y ago
  Surely this has the ability to backfire tremendously
- coriny 7y ago
  I suspect it's the work of Grant Shapps: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-who-is-he-theresa-may-pm-plot-overthrow-two-names-jobs-a7986761.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-..., a known SEO spammer.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Searching "boris johnson bus" still comes up with a dozen pictures of the Brexit bus, with the "model bus" rambling not 'til below the fold. So it doesn't work all that well.
- rmc 7y ago
  I think other British politicians do it. What do you think websearching for "Jacob Rees-Moog lying" will get you now?
- gowld 7y ago
  Boris Johnson has been painting red busses since before I had is own Brexit bus. The Brexit bus wasn't a secret, it was his campaign vehicle. "red busses" only seem obscure to you because you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses. It's insane that people are obsesses with calling "conspiracy!" on Johnson for making an easily verifiable true statement about himself.
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    > you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses. Well, London certainly is, the rest of the country tends to be mixed between green (arriva) and white/purple (first) these days. In the days before deregulation, red was indeed the most common colour country-wide, but even then there were abhorrations such as west yorkshire's green and cream - there's another conversation to be had about 1950s and 1960s liveries composed of 'and cream' combinations that probably started with BR (well, the BTC then, which would have been the parent 'company' for most local bus services) 'crimson and cream' carriage livery - known colloquially as 'Blood and Custard'.
  - sincerely 7y ago
    What? I think you're misunderstanding. The weird part isn't that the bus he describes himself painting is red, or that his campaign bus was red, it's that his hobby is apparently painting buses out of empty wine boxes and it sounds like he's making it up on the spot.
- johnnycab 7y ago
  >I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news... The gaming of keywords, offline and online, to influence SERP's has been done before and continues to do so ─ the optics on the practice of Google-bombing is a matter of frequency illusion. As an example, 'Santorum' clearly demonstrated the value and the power it holds. The eponymous search engine has a role to play by favouring newer content e.g. news media involving politics, entertainment and culture. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/freshness-update/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22...
7thaccount 7y ago
They talked about this on John Olliver. They had a bizarre interview where he brought up a story about a bus and people think it is to salt the keywords of Google search to not show a campaign bus that highlighted something like free health care or something like that. Edit: user "sincerely" has a better description and links
- DarkmSparks 7y ago
  Thing that got me was the bus thing was "spiritually" true. The UK does send a fortune to the EU, and the EU will not spend it on the NHS. At best they may use it to resurface a road in the UK in some town no one has ever heard of along with a "eu project" propoganda badge. But the spirit of the message held water, even if it wasnt technically true during tuesday of the second easter of a red moon.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    It is also "spiritually" true that you send a fortune to food producers. Put that way, you focus on the price but not the benefits.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    This is not a Brexit discussion. It just happens to feature Boris Johnson.
  - nbevans 7y ago
    It isn't "spiritually" true. It is factually true to the extent that the High Court ruled 350m was approximately the correct gross figure. Indeed some say that figure is conservative because it was based on projections from an official figure dated from 2014 that put the gross at closer to 450m. I'm guessing 2014 was high because of financial bailouts still being paid into the EU coffers. From the ruling statement: “The alleged offence set out in the Application for Summons is that the Claimant “repeatedly made and endorsed false and misleading statements concerning the cost of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union”. It appears that if the Claimant had said/endorsed a figure of £350m per week gross, or £250m per week net, there would have been no complaint.” https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc-1709-admin-johnson-v-westminster-mags-final.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc... (search in doc for "350" to find the juicy bits)
rusk 7y ago
> I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? Because it makes you look like a fool. Doesn’t mean it won’t work though. Bojo apparently targetting the segment for whom this kind thing goes over their heads
- Rainymood 7y ago
  Then I'd argue that we are the greater fools for letting this happen without any consequences. Personally I think this is a genius move by Bojo and something that should be applauded by hackers (this is Hacker News after all). It literally hacks the system, and I think it's beautiful.
  - croon 7y ago
    It's genius in the same way as crawling over websites looking for a 90s relic to inject "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS x;". Personally I don't deem anything genius simply on the merit that "it works".
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Then I'd argue that we are the greater fools for letting this happen without any consequences. Letting what exactly happen? Him using a phrase that might or might not have been intended to make a previous story fall in search results? As if the original story about the model could not still be in the front pages of newspapers and websites, and so on? That's not even half an accusation... The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal (in the real sense of the people's will being followed) than "the PM used a SEO phrase..."....
    - m-i-l 7y ago
      "The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal" The public did not vote for something specific - they voted for something very vague and ill defined, the little information they were provided was incorrect (e.g. "an extra £350m a week for the NHS"), nobody had anything even approaching a plan, the whole thing was a shambolic amateur affair, and that's one of the reasons it has taken so long and cost so much to get nowhere. The only vaguely professional part was the manipulation of the small majority via social media (Cambridge Analytica etc.) That is the bigger democratic scandal - the fact that we can no longer have nice things like democracy thanks to the abuse of technology by arrogant thugs from expensive schools, which is the original point of the parent.
ollybee 7y ago
Not the first time he has been accused of this https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/1143808921074843648?lang=en https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/114380892107484364...
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
  I think the case is stronger now. This happening once might just be co-incidence. Twice, not so much.
demarq 7y ago
So appalled but... So impressed!
thrwasyfjt 7y ago
I'm shocked that this works on a technical level, simply because a lot of words we use are ambiguous, so Google's algorithms are impressively good at picking up what we're really searching for. I'm constantly amazed to see the correct search results, and almost never have to add clarifying terms, even when I have to admit that I am being quite ambiguous. So I never would have expected this to be possible, let alone exploitable.
- mxcrossb 7y ago
  I don’t think it really does work? When I search, the hidden story appears again.
doctorpangloss 7y ago
The funnier thing to me is the people in the thread talking about how DuckDuckGo finds the "right" results. DuckDuckGo is just Yahoo. I think the results are something like 99.9% the same, so whatever is the 0.1% they add, when I did the search, it results in maybe a slight difference in link ordering. The reason it finds the "right" results is also the same reason its results are such garbage. And this is coming from someone whose default search is DuckDuckGo.
- Paianni 7y ago
  and Yahoo is just Bing nowadays.
- petargyurov 7y ago
  > its results are such garbage Whenever people complain about DDG's search results I am always a bit baffled. It works 95% of the time for me and that 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug. I know this is your word against mine but "garbage" is a bit of an exaggeration.
  - k3liutZu 7y ago
    > 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug I think these are a majority of my searches, hence I had to switch back to google as DDG was almost never finding me any relevant result.
    - swebs 7y ago
      Try Startpage. It uses Google results, but anonymized and without personalization.
    - majjam 7y ago
      You don't just use the bangs (g!)? Or is that what you mean by switching back?
    - maest 7y ago
      For balance, i find around 30% of results to be bad. One really annoying thing is that python searches keep surfacing the python2 official docs instead of the python3 ones. Ddg is my main search engine, but I find I fall back to g! queries more and more often.
shard972 7y ago
It's amazing how it's actually the right wing parties who are tech savvy.
goatinaboat 7y ago
Boris has always been an expert at saying one thing to the people in the room but something else to people reading about his speech afterwards. Now he’s taking it to the next level. Kudos!
janpot 7y ago
I think I've heard about this tactic before, where it was used to help victims of revenge porn. It was used to push unwanted search results for their names away from the top in Google.
ewidar 7y ago
> I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? Well there was a story on french president Macron who was apparently thinking of renaming the ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France) to "Institut Superieur des Fonctionaires", ISF in short (http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par-l-isf-l-elysee-dement-20190423 http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par... sorry it's in French). But ISF is also the short name of the tax on the richest, which he has gotten rid of amid a lot of controversy. They didn't end up renaming ENA to ISF, but that would have been a great way to play the SEO game so that searching for "Macron ISF" may have in the future returned results on the school rather than the tax.
- duxut_staglatz 7y ago
  Describing the ENA as a university is misleading [0]: its does no research and does grant degrees [1]. All "students" are civil servant in training that have been hired through the civil service examinations and will go on to their jobs. They spend more than half of their "studies" working already to learn on the job. It's like saying Parris Island is a university. [0] In my opinion, this characterization as university stenghtens (a bit) its critics. After all, how come one small university has an almost monopoly on high ranking civil servants and then on top politicians? It should not be the case. But if you see it as a civil servant training program it is obvious how it comes to be - it's like wondering why so many US Army officers come form West Point - well, that's because West Point is there to produce US Army officers. [1] Well it does in partnership with universities, but not for its main civil servant training program
  - ganzuul 7y ago
    How can you miss the point so intently?
    - duxut_staglatz 7y ago
      This is only a reply to: "ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France)", and not to the ENA->ISF name change.
azangru 7y ago
While fascinating, if this is a deliberate strategy, I wonder what its intended effect is supposed to be. Are people curious enough to google for stories about Johnson's alleged affair with the American woman going to be satisfied with the "model of restraint" quote? Are they going to forget what they have just been searching for, get immediately distracted and go read what this model of restraint business is all about? Do we have any inkling as to whether this works at all?
- IMTDb 7y ago
  No, but it makes the alleged affair look a lot less important. If a news story is not even on the first page of google results, is it even that big of a deal ?
  - gowld 7y ago
    The only things that matter are what is on the front page for a vague search term? If you remove the vague extra word "model", the alleged affair is still on the first page pof results for "Boris johnson". Also, if you want news, perhaps you could...read a news site, not just stop at whatever Google suggests as 10 headlines related to a three word query
  - DrScientist 7y ago
    Actually the alleged affair, is not the important bit. The important bit is him appearing to mis-use public funds for a friend ( whether that friend was with benefits or not ).
- pflenker 7y ago
  If I committed murder and wanted to hide the body, I would hide it on Page 2 of the search results. No one goes there. After all, if the first x results are not what you were looking for, how likely is it that the next x results will provide a match?
  - azangru 7y ago
    That's totally fair if the user doesn't know what they are searching for (e.g. if the only search criterion is Boris Johnson); but if they already know that there is a body; if they have already heard about the model (or the bus), how likely are they to be put off the scent by irrelevant search results?
coldtea 7y ago
The level of paranoia in the Twitter thread is worrying...
- dtf 7y ago
  Welcome to #FBPE Twitter.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    i'd say welcome to twitter. the trashcan of our times.
AznHisoka 7y ago
My respect level for Boris actually went up a few notches after reading about this :)
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Indeed. The "lovable bumbling fool" image he puts across is a very conscious choice on his part. Despite what you think about his politics (and I'm personally not a fan) you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    > you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think. In playing the political game at least, definitely so. Lots of reports from coworkers (especially from the Foreign Office) that he is genuinely as clueless as he comes across when it comes to other elements of his job.
    - rusk 7y ago
      Indeed, he is completely unproven in any matters of statecraft and has been founding wanting in actual matters of substance on many occasions.
    - verbify 7y ago
      The news story that really made me believe that the bumbling fool shtick is real and not just an act was when he went to a buddhist temple in Myanmar and started reciting a colonial-era Kipling poem about a British soldier reminiscing about a Burmese girl that he kissed - until the ambassador intervened and told him it wasn't appropriate. If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three wars the British fought to suppress Burmese independence) then he would've never recited the poem. But he is a 'well-trained idiot' - he's had an English classical education, so he knows Kipling, but he doesn't understand what it actually _means_ ('oh yeah, I totally was going to shag a girl when we were fighting in Burma') or how it would come across to someone who wasn't also from a classically trained English background. So I think he is a clueless bumbling idiot. He, and Jacobs Rees-Moggs, are the British equivalent of a Texan politician who wears a cowboy hat and talks about their guns all the time. The story is available here - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johns...
fnord123 7y ago
Maybe he's trying to hide potential results from "Boris Johnson restraint" Now get that image out of your mind. ;)
krick 7y ago
Wow, that's damn impressive. It makes me consider to start following politics, I wonder what other fantastic moves this guy (or somebody else) routinely uses that I never heard of.
olivierduval 7y ago
The most worrying for me? Even after countless updates to their algorithms, breakthrough AI and ML, breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics :-( Or is Google biased toward "official" speech (even from a really-not-trustable source) like Twitter is when it will allow BS from a President (because it's an official account so not subject to moderation) or like FB is when deciding to NOT fact-check President obvious fake-news for the same reason ? Maybe it's time to clearly distinguish 2 activities: search on one side, that has to be exhaustive, fact-checked, ranked by differences/complementarity (no use to show 10 times the same result, better to show 10 really different result with indication of common consensus) - and news of the day, where truth is much more "volatile" ?
- H8crilA 7y ago
  I mean the query "Boris Johnson model" is genuinely ambiguous, it's a property of language rather than Google. There are a lot of queries out there that are truly ambiguous. Can't reproduce the "wrong" result locally, but I bet the results for the "woman model" interpretation are just below the results for the "model of restraint" interpretation.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    The question is whether Google is supposed to be a neutral media or a biased one. But besides that - most of the time I myself would prefer if Google served more diverse than more popular results. E.g. seeing several most popular results for a term from every month this year will have way more information than 20 different content copies for the same event popular right now
- akerro 7y ago
  > breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics Google wasn't tricked, it's intentional. Their business model is generating money from clicks. It's not showing you best results for what you search for. It's showing latest news, tragedy, and what people talk about. 10h old news? OLD, BORING. New shiny 2h young news? YEA, more clicks, clicks and more click, more ads, more clicks, more revenue. The sponsored content online must be constantly changing and adapting to new information to generate more profits and more clicks and keep people clicking and visiting and searching. Don't forget that it's not only sponsored content, but also targeted content with user tracking, because clicks count, on one day they will show you news to annoy you to generate more searches and clicks, on another day they will show you majority of stuff to calm you down. Keep clicking.
biscotte_ 7y ago
Definitely more clever than asking Google to reove the results, like Hillary Clinton did during the campaign wrt. Searches on her health.
dtf 7y ago
This is just silly. The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a model. It would be like searching for info about (UK supreme court president) Lady Hale by Googling “barmaid”. Try instead searching for “Boris Johnson technology lessons”, or indeed “Boris Johnson thigh”. Has his team SEO’d that yet?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nbevans 7y ago
  He can SEO the "thigh" one with some sort of sentence along the lines "nobody ever got sick eating the thigh of a chlorinated American chicken!"
- playpause 7y ago
  > The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a model. Sky News: "Boris Johnson: 'No interest to declare' over links with former model Jennifer Arcuri" The Mirror: "Boris Johnson 'had affair with ex-model Jennifer Arcuri while London mayor'" The Sun: "Who is Jennifer Arcuri? Model connected to Boris Johnson" The Independent: "Jennifer Arcuri: Boris Johnson repeatedly refuses to deny affair with ex-model awarded public funds and access"
  - dtf 7y ago
    Fair point. Looks like I read the wrong newspapers! Anyway... BREAKING: this particular ex-model's just had her laptop stolen while she was in the UK... containing 6 years of emails, documents, photos and personal who-knows-what from the time when she was reportedly giving technology lessons to our now Prime Minister. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Arcuri-terrified-laptop-close-Boris-Johnson-stolen.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Ar...
    - makomk 7y ago
      Arguably it should be the last thing anyone would know about Arcuri - treating everything else a woman in tech has done as irrelevant because she once modelled would normally be a fringe and controversial opinion, to put it lightly - but that's not how the press is framing this story.
onemoresoop 7y ago
Boris is a cunning boy. Why hasn’t (Barbara) Stresisand effect eaten got by now?
WebDanube 7y ago
As a non-Brit, I'm quite impressed by his ploy. I feel the comparison between him and the POTUS are unfair to him. He's way smarter and more tech savvy than his counterpart across the pond.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  It's not him it's his advisors whether independent or part of the civil service PR dept. If he's clever it's that, like any good manager, he delegates to others.
matthewblott 7y ago
Hmm, you sure about this? I just googled "boris johnson model" and got nothing but results about affairs and Jennifer Arcuri.
- hollander 7y ago
  Nobody can be sure about this except google itself, because google gives different results for each user or location. I get all the affairs as well, but I don't matter to BJ as I'm not a UK citizen and won't vote.
  - photoangell 7y ago
    Just for fun, I connected through a VPN (private internet access) and googled via a fresh firefox private window and the majority of the results are about his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri. A couple of results at the bottom of the page are about his "model of restraint" quote, that's it!
guiriduro 7y ago
There should be a word for this, perhaps content or SEO masking, its definitely a thing. I first experienced the practice in regard to an unscrupulous company - whose sales techniques involve misrepresentation (I know as I was briefly trained in them, years ago) - called Marcus Evans. They also run business events, so if you were to look their name up in reference to 'scam' or 'fraud', then details of their 'fraud prevention' event would show up first. Luckily, it looks like someone more skilled in SEO has kicked them down the first page of google, deservedly, or perhaps Google's algorithms have improved since.
CraneWorm 7y ago
This just makes me sick. I admit, it was clever the first time. Now it's just an horrible person getting away with it.
synt4x1k0 7y ago
Wouldn't this require him to know how he is going to be quoted in advance? Should everyone be so readily accepting that this is some genius level of foresight?
- learnstats2 7y ago
  It's hardly genius and it's hardly coming from Boris. His press team will have told him to drop in particular words or phrases repeatedly - if we hear it once, he has probably said it multiple times.
  - synt4x1k0 7y ago
    Is there evidence of this happening though? It just seems like this is a screenshot with some comments on it, and a lot of assumptions.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      The evidence is the pattern of behavior. No, it's not conclusive of the fact, the accusation is based on circumstantial evidence, but it is still evidence.
sshagent 7y ago
I can foresee the next step of this, as politicians try and seed the SOE terms for their opposition with their speeches. We could be due an era of complete gibberish from politicians instead of just lies (note: i direct "lies" to all politicians not to JUST Boris )
csswizardry 7y ago
My pals cracked this one back in June! https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo-strategist https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-...
- OJFord 7y ago
  Plugging a mate's blog or not, this is much more interesting and informative than '<screenshot> omg the world is so corrupt' & some guy tweeting speculation.
foobarbecue 7y ago
Yet another reason we need synonym-aware search. Google should do nlp to find which "model" is being used in the page and then ask you which one you meant.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Far from unique to BoJo. This is a wildly successful strategy, which also explains the outrageous and obvious lying (e.g. in front of dozens of press saying "there's no press here"). It's not new. Many of the internet era populists currently so successful have used it. Trump was the first time I saw it, but perhaps it goes back further. Each and every time he lies, misremembers and drops in a search term he makes it harder to disprove as both sides get reported. The original story and the the reports of the use of the lie. Both in the respected media, not just a random blogspot. Frequently they're both running at the same time. With Trump the Democrats and media spent to much time "fact checking" to see the strategy. Ours have done no better with BoJo, despite seeing it played out so successfully in the US. It completely burns the post-war expectation that politicians be honest, and plays all sides as effectively. I'd love to know where it really originated.
- osullivj 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
vfc1 7y ago
This sounds like another silly conspiracy theory to me, what is most likely happening is the exact opposite. These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to generate advertising revenue. It's the cheap websites doing SEO based on popular Boris Johnson terms, and not Boris Johnson's team. I mean the risk of someone in his staff of multiple people that would have to know about this to leak that he was doing it to the press just to push down on google searches unfavorable news would be huge. One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any sense.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  > These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to generate advertising revenue. The three websites mentioned are amongst the UK's biggest news websites, reporting on legitimate Boris-related news (ie his alleged affair with Arcuri and his rather farcical claim that he's a model of restraint). The claim in the tweet is that Boris used the wording 'model of restraint' to try to mask the other story, though if this is true it clearly didn't work very well. It's credible mostly because of the prior bus incident; it's actually a fairly reasonable explanation for Boris spouting what otherwise appeared to be contextless nonsense. > One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any sense. Wait, you think _this_ would be the controversy to sink Boris Johnson? Really? Boris is now so unpopular that the people who still like him are largely almost unshakeable, but even before his recent troubles, this would not have moved the dial.
  - vfc1 7y ago
    If he tried to use the sentence model of restraint to bury on Google results the stories about his affair with a model, it would never work because the front page of google has 10 results, surely both stories (model of restraint and affair stories) will rank in the top results. At most, he might be able to divert some of the traffic from one article to the other, but no more. If that is what people are accusing him, it might be true it's possible that he is being advised to use this political SEO strategy, to try to divert internet attention from one story to the other. But the results would be unpredictable and marginal at best.
_-___________-_ 7y ago
The media could probably recognise this tactic and refuse to support it, by paraphrasing that part of his quote, e.g. PM emphasises his "restraint" amid Parliament language row
hans_castorp 7y ago
Another good reason to stop using Google and use alternative search engines.
HenryBemis 7y ago
John Oliver mentioned this in his show, Last Week Tonight a couple of months ago [0]. Boris is a snake with a smart team behind him. He wants to divide and he creates more tension and hatred instead of providing solutions. He follows the steps of the Oompa Loompa across the pond. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k Edit: this post will be sooooo bad for the "karma points" but it's 100% accurate on BoJo the Bozo.
- concordDance 7y ago
  You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    If you see any other comment I make (and I don't expect anyone to spend 1 second on seeing my other opinions) I am always positive an open minded. Right now this snake is threatening my well being, my income, my life balance. I don't take that lightly. This snake is also being reckless with a neighboring country, Ireland, and with his dangerous and careless actions he is risking to throw them to another decade of Troubles (look it up). My negativity hurt your eyes. His actions may cause deaths. You're right. I'm to blame. Edit: I actually upvoted your comment, you are right on calling out my comment :)
    - compuguy 7y ago
      I saw that Last Week Tonight segment. I agree with your original post.
    - concordDance 7y ago
      > My negativity hurt your eyes. That's uncharitable. I believe your rhetoric hurts the culture and quality of discussion of hackernews. I have seen quite a number of places degenerate into partisan (I don't strictly mean USA Dems vs Reps, but Culture War sides) namecalling, normally shortly before one side completely drives out the other and degenerates into a virtue-signalling circle jerk. While that may be hackernews' inevitable fate I want to put it off as long as possible.
known 7y ago
Is he buying adwords?
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Not that much of an idiot as I thought. On hiding criminal behavior at least. Normally it means a lot of experience in that.
- dx034 7y ago
  An idiot wouldn't get to be tory leader. He wants to be portrayed as a lovable idiot but it doesn't mean he is one. I doubt we ever see any part of his real personality in public. Doesn't mean he can be a good prime minister though, being good at politics isn't the only thing that matters for the job.
alecco 7y ago
Or perhaps after 10hs the older news articles faded out. Occam's razor.
demarq 7y ago
Politicians are now also under the Google algorithms. Which gives Google unprecedented power.
sergiomattei 7y ago
Apparently this is a known strategy. https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1143585761842933760 https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/11435857618429...
IAmGraydon 7y ago
We should probably pause for a moment and at least consider whether the true manipulator is the guy who originally posted it on Twitter. As far as I can see, no one has been able to duplicate his “results”. I’m not accusing, but would be interested in seeing confirmation from another party.
sacado2 7y ago
At first I read it backwards, I thought he had had sex with a model just to hide a scandal about a "model of restraint" and thought " wow, that guy is really doing all he can to hide the scandal". And then I remembered it was not France and having an affair could be a scandal, and I'm a little disappointed because I preferred my version.
- jnty 7y ago
  To be fair, the affair is only the scandal because it may have caused a conflict of interest. Boris has had plenty of them in the past, to the point where nobody knows for certain how many children he has.
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    Correct. It's the corruption that has his critics seeing blood in the water. Visiting your affair's home during work hours while funneling money into her business and taking her on trips she has no reason to be on to boost her career is what's the problem, not the affair. The fact that the affair has been admitted matters only because it bolsters corruption allegations.
  - pysxul 7y ago
    French here, I second this. - Jacques Chirac had an affair - Francois Holland also had one (quite funny he would sneak out on a motorbike to visit his mistress) - There is growing rumours on Emmanuel Macron being secretly Gay and being married to Brigitte is a cover On a side note, someone personal life choices has no impact on their work as politicians so that kind of "scandal" are not that big of a deal in France. It only increase the sales of gossip magazines.
buboard 7y ago
Quite impressive knowledge of technology. Why do people think this is a bad thing? Certainly saves on PR costs.
charlus 7y ago
It's important to be skeptical about this, but it's somewhat fun to entertain as a way of neutralising any potential attack lines for upcoming elections. So far: * Buses * Models * Bridges 3 is a pattern. Maybe we could anticipate future subjects being letter boxes, water cannons, watermelons, Iran, etc.
dalbasal 7y ago
I'm skeptical. (a)When I search "Boris Johnson model," I still get the Jennifer Arcuri results and (b) even if working perfectly, this kind of SEO spamming would be pretty marginal. People are exposed to the "model" story via so many avenues: TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms... It just doesn't seem worth it. At best it takes like 10% of the heat off him for a day. Null hypothesis is that Boris just says a lot of random, baffling shit and everything makes the news.
- dangerface 7y ago
  The problem is that the "model" story faces the same exposure on TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms...
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Yeah me too. I've read a fair bit about the story and I didn't even know she was a model. She's mostly mentioned by name, and called an entrepreneur or businesswoman - not a model.
- repolfx 7y ago
  But using the word "model" to mean "a model of good behaviour" which is what it meant in that context is totally normal English. And Boris has been associated with buses for ages, in his time as London mayor a revamp of the buses became known as literally "Boris Buses". The idea he might have an eccentric hobby involving buses is entirely plausible. I don't think Boris says random baffling shit. I think the null hypothesis is that a whole lot of Brexit-haters have fully immersed themselves in conspiracy theories, to the extent that normal English words used in interviews is now being described as SEO. It looks comparable to how in America a whole lot of Hillary Clinton supporters ended up believing in a conspiracy theory that said their president was a Russian spy. Any even slightly conservative leader seems to bring this out in some people ... it's a need to see evil plots to explain the phenomenon of people who disagree.
  - meowface 7y ago
    The thing is in this case, Boris has been caught red-handed doing very similar sorts of "cunning disguised as idiocy" ploys before. For example, feigning forgetting speeches. It seems plausible that it was intentional. Both sides of the political aisle are certainly highly susceptible to conspiracy theories about the opposition, but this case seems pretty interesting. It may be a wolf-crying situation, too: since Boris has likely done it before (I disagree with you and think the bus thing was SEO gaming, though this one may not be since the chance of coincidence is likely due to it being common word usage), people are going to start seeing it even when it isn't happening.
wila 7y ago
A smart online newspaper that suddenly sees a lot of hits on their "model bus" article would seize that opportunity. They could rewrite the URL and show an inbetween page that says something along the lines of "we see you are interested in Boris Johnson & models" you might also like ... Then they could add another article about SEO poisening. Now THAT would be great reporting! Not sure if any of them are keen enough to seize that opportunity.. edit: Of course an even easier way to do so is to edit the model bus article and insert a clickable "news headline"
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Once is not a pattern. Without a pattern this is simply Twitter being Twitter. That is,misguided people - the type that don't understand correlation from cause - are having their free time sucked up, and they like it that way. Find a pattern. Let's discuss that.
- invalidusernam3 7y ago
  This isn't the first time this has been brought up: https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo-strategist https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-...
nmeofthestate 7y ago
This is up there with "I was talking about X with my friend, and half an hour later I saw a Google ad for X. Ergo, Google are listening in on my phone's microphone."
- quirkafleeg3 7y ago
  I've had this happen before, and it was just a little bit very creepy indeed, and did make me wonder.
- nmeofthestate 7y ago
  Apparently, rational HN readers don't require any actual evidence before going with the assertion that "Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews". Crazy times.
realradicalwash 7y ago
the conservatives seem to be way ahead of the others when it comes to modern technology/media. we've seen physicists being hired to plan where to knock on doors [0], very targeted social media ads based on proper data analysis, and now apparently SEO hacking. not sure that these are good developments; but they seem irreversible and labour/the libdems want to catch up asap if they want to stay relevant. [0] as mentioned by Cummings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4
kitd 7y ago
See also "Boris Johnson & Kippers" [1] ("kipper" is a nickname for a member of UKIP, a right-wing pro-Brexit political party) He was talking about buses on the radio again this morning, as was Sajid Javid, the chancellor, yesterday. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers-eu-isle-of-man_uk_5d30a0d4e4b004b6adacb0e2 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers...
- rainforest 7y ago
  The "spineless chicken" Corbyn attack could also have been to muddy the "chlorinated chicken" association too.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
air7 7y ago
This has never crossed my mind as a possibility. It's ingenious. I wonder if/when this has ever been done before. On second thought in a broader way this idea, of masking truth by hiding it behind something similar, is quite old. For example the idea that Pagan holidays were turned into Christian ones in an effort to erase them.
mlang23 7y ago
I don't care. I want BREXIT now, since the british voted for it. All these delays are poison for democracy. Hard brexit yesterday. And if the pro EU people want to join again, they can apply in 5 years if they manage to find a majority. And now, let the downvotes come.
- Lendal 7y ago
  What you're asking for is Brexit by fiat, the opposite of democracy. The reason it hasn't happened yet is precisely because of democracy. People can't agree. Everyone wants it their way, but everyone can't have their way. Someone must volunteer to be the loser. If you had Brexit by fiat, it would have happened already.
- walshemj 7y ago
  Read the words on the paper it was an advisory vote not a binding one.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  People voted for Brexit, sure, but two problems come to mind when trying to use that fact as support for crashing out of the UK: 1) People did not, when voting, stipulate what sort or Brexit they wanted, but they were promised an orderly exit with a great deal that would preserve the benefits of EU membership. And in polls since then, they have overwhelmingly said they do not want no-deal. This places the democratic path firmly on the side of "let's get a deal done the right way." Though with no majority agreeing on "the right way" is a problem, it's one for democratic compromise to solve, and that can take time. 2) Appealing to the 2016 will of the people ignores the fact that democracies don't vote one and never ever ever touch on the same topic again. In fact there are votes every few years so that, if people change their minds, that can be reflected in government. Personally I think going back on Brexit at this point would be bad for the UK as a society, if not so much as an economy, but there's nothing undemocratic about people saying, "I made a choice, I've since learned a little more about it and don't like it anymore. Let's vote to see if enough people feel the same way."
  - mlang23 7y ago
rsynnott 7y ago
This really raises the question of what news story involving 'bowling' and 'green' was around in early 2017.
rebolek 7y ago
Just a reminder that Boris Johnson is not an elected leader.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  You're simply "reminding" people of how a parliamentary democracy works. Plus it is inaccurate, he was elected, against Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, and other candidates in the Conservative Party Leadership race. Voted on by MPs who the public themselves feel were qualified to represent them in a representative democracy. I have no love for Boris Johnson (nor the Conservative Party itself). But this kind of "not a democratic leader!" line is simply spreading misinformation about how the UK's system of government works. You vote for MPs, MPs vote for stuff on your behalf, and in this case they voted for the leader of their party (and now the government). It should also be noted that the UK doesn't have a ruling king and it doesn't have a president. The PMs power is a lot more curtailed than some other countries that do, and they need to go back to Parliament to accomplish much of their agenda (and are equally subject to the law). If they lose their voting majority, they're hugely neutered.
  - pierrebai 7y ago
    A large proprotion of people vote for the parties or the leaders of parties, not the individual who happens to be the MP in the circumscription. I certainly do put more weigh on the party's program than on a choice of a local shmuck among multiple local smucks.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    However, he's lost his majority due to throwing about 20 MPs out of the party. This is a really, really odd situation; Schroedinger's PM. At some point, probably very soon, the confidence vote is going to be held and we find out whether he has a majority or not. He's also trying to talk up whether he's really subject to the law or not, specifically in regard to the Benn Act against no-deal.
  - sergioj97 7y ago
    I think he commented that only because the OP said "even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders".
rpmisms 7y ago
Human SEO. What a clever tactic. This is essentially adding noise to signal--what Trump does to the media, just a little more tech-savvy. The steps: -An issue comes out that makes you look bad -You take a question and respond in a boring, non-memorable way -Then you go off on wild, ridiculous tangents that everyone guffaws at until the next news cycle.
ortusdux 7y ago
Reminds me of the conspiracy theory that Disney named the movie Frozen so that it would drown out searches about Walt freezing his head.
tantalor 7y ago
This is a case of "Streisand effect"
satysin 7y ago
I made a throwaway suggestion he was doing this a few months back on reddit when he brought "bus" into the conversation [0] I wish I had started keeping track of things he says to see how his comments impact search results. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris_johnson_makes_and_paints_buses_for_a_hobby/es5o3sk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris...
- gowld 7y ago
  And this theory was just as absurd last time. Johnson has been talking about buses of various kinds for decades. He doesn't control when his bus claims make news.
  - satysin 7y ago
    I disagree. Calling it “absurd” is synonymous with calling it illogical when in fact it is extremely logical for Boris to use keywords to bury hits in search results. IMHO it is a smart way to game the system to his advantage.
JamesBaxter 7y ago
This is an interesting idea but is it possible that in this case the reason the top story has changed is because it’s newer?
gowld 7y ago
This was debunked last time it went around. People don't understand coincidences. Johnson has lived a long life. Buses are common. He's painted buses for a long time, and he used a bus in his Brexit campaign. Johnson says a lot of things; that's been his job for decades. This conspiracy is the same as the now that says Facebook was recording everything you say and putting it in ads.
rajaganesh87 7y ago
Finally, a politician who understands tech
usrusr 7y ago
Time to re-read Stephenson's (well, "Stephen Bury") Interface. I don't remember it as a particularly good read, but it might be great fun to contrast the innocuously blunt politicization of mediatech envisioned 25 years ago with the realities of the Trump/Johnson way of playing democracy.
ineedasername 7y ago
At least in the case of the search, "boris johnson model", the tactic isn't working anymore. "boris johnson bus" on the other hand still shows a bunch of his model-building bus stories. However, if you change it to "boris johnson london bus" then you get some top results that include the controversial red bus.
NoblePublius 7y ago
Algorithmic news is fake news
- ineedasername 7y ago
  It's not algorithmic news; It's the ordered presentation of news via algorithmic methods.
burtonator 7y ago
Boris Johnson is like the mesothelioma of UK politics. He just looks seems like the kind of guy who buys real estate while playing online gambling on viagra. He's only interested in fast cash. He desperately needs advice but isn't going to get my free consultation. Maybe he can use a gift certificate though. Hopefully he accepts credit cards for this limited time offer. Operators are standing by.
_bxg1 7y ago
People like to compare him to Donald Trump, but what I've always read is that unlike Trump he's actually quite intelligent. For better or worse.
doctorRetro 7y ago
That's actually pretty clever. Credit where it's due.
seamyb88 7y ago
Is it any wonder that Dominic Cummings wants to leave the GDPR, sorry I mean the EU.
ssivark 7y ago
“The medium is the message.” — Marshall McLuhan As an aside, these are the kinds of things that people worry about, when they worry about (ML) algorithms “overfitting” to a particular proxy target/metric.
biffosmitho 7y ago
Might explain something. I raised a petition to use Sunday Voting to beat the Tories & DUP (it gives 15-20% bigger turnouts - nearly all left of centre). On the very next week Johnson came up with a change to the election day to a Monday (the first change since 1931) and almost immediately it was rejected for "religious reasons" - That sounds very fishy to me. Fight back and sign: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133

918 points by pflenker 7y ago

Love tech in general but this new psy ops style of leadership that is becoming popular in the west makes me uneasy. Obviously politicians will spin things as always but the tech leveraged version of that is a little ominous

sincerely 7y ago

This is actually fascinating (even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders). He did the same thing in June where he gave a completely baffling interview [1] about how his hobby was painting models of buses out of used fruit crates. But people suspected [2] then that it might be a similar strategy, to monopolize the results for "boris johnson bus" searches. I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ [2] https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-buses-to-manipulat-1835903361 https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-bus...

vfc1 7y ago
There is a much simpler explanation. It's actually these cheap news websites engineering articles targetting Boris Johnson popular terms (like Model or Bus), in order to generate clicks and advertising revenue.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  But Johnson still seems to deliver suitable quotes on cue. As much as I prefer explanations that involve less assumed cooperarion between actors, I don't see how yours can hold up in this case.
  - vfc1 7y ago
    These websites have money to gain for writing these articles targetting SEO keywords on things Boris Johnson says or does. They will pick up on any term for which they can easily write an article and run with it to get ad clicks. I don't think Boris Johnson even has to do anything to make this happen, even though he obviously has something to gain in terms that these articles turn the public attention from these issues. I mean this can be applied to literally almost anything he does or says. At worst, he might be intentionally adding to his speech terms that are easier to apply this technique to.
maybetho 7y ago
Maybe they are? Devin Nunes went on a ramble the other day rather than discuss Trump. It’s to boost the signal of nonsense? So nation states are pretty much at Orwell level? “Gobbledygook & toot pickles, primrose!” The idiocracy ejaculated! as they launched the nukes.
StaticAtom 7y ago
Makes me wonder what Jean-Claude Junker, head of the EU, is hiding now when he came out with the bizarre statement "he did not have an erotic relationship with the Irish Backstop". Anyone know?
fangorn 7y ago
"boris" "johnson" "fruit" hm, was it create or... cake?
rkachowski 7y ago
Surely this has the ability to backfire tremendously
coriny 7y ago
I suspect it's the work of Grant Shapps: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-who-is-he-theresa-may-pm-plot-overthrow-two-names-jobs-a7986761.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-..., a known SEO spammer.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Searching "boris johnson bus" still comes up with a dozen pictures of the Brexit bus, with the "model bus" rambling not 'til below the fold. So it doesn't work all that well.
rmc 7y ago
I think other British politicians do it. What do you think websearching for "Jacob Rees-Moog lying" will get you now?
gowld 7y ago
Boris Johnson has been painting red busses since before I had is own Brexit bus. The Brexit bus wasn't a secret, it was his campaign vehicle. "red busses" only seem obscure to you because you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses. It's insane that people are obsesses with calling "conspiracy!" on Johnson for making an easily verifiable true statement about himself.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  > you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses. Well, London certainly is, the rest of the country tends to be mixed between green (arriva) and white/purple (first) these days. In the days before deregulation, red was indeed the most common colour country-wide, but even then there were abhorrations such as west yorkshire's green and cream - there's another conversation to be had about 1950s and 1960s liveries composed of 'and cream' combinations that probably started with BR (well, the BTC then, which would have been the parent 'company' for most local bus services) 'crimson and cream' carriage livery - known colloquially as 'Blood and Custard'.
- sincerely 7y ago
  What? I think you're misunderstanding. The weird part isn't that the bus he describes himself painting is red, or that his campaign bus was red, it's that his hobby is apparently painting buses out of empty wine boxes and it sounds like he's making it up on the spot.
johnnycab 7y ago
>I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news... The gaming of keywords, offline and online, to influence SERP's has been done before and continues to do so ─ the optics on the practice of Google-bombing is a matter of frequency illusion. As an example, 'Santorum' clearly demonstrated the value and the power it holds. The eponymous search engine has a role to play by favouring newer content e.g. news media involving politics, entertainment and culture. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/freshness-update/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22...

7thaccount 7y ago

They talked about this on John Olliver. They had a bizarre interview where he brought up a story about a bus and people think it is to salt the keywords of Google search to not show a campaign bus that highlighted something like free health care or something like that. Edit: user "sincerely" has a better description and links

DarkmSparks 7y ago
Thing that got me was the bus thing was "spiritually" true. The UK does send a fortune to the EU, and the EU will not spend it on the NHS. At best they may use it to resurface a road in the UK in some town no one has ever heard of along with a "eu project" propoganda badge. But the spirit of the message held water, even if it wasnt technically true during tuesday of the second easter of a red moon.
- sorokod 7y ago
  It is also "spiritually" true that you send a fortune to food producers. Put that way, you focus on the price but not the benefits.
- Tomte 7y ago
  This is not a Brexit discussion. It just happens to feature Boris Johnson.
- nbevans 7y ago
  It isn't "spiritually" true. It is factually true to the extent that the High Court ruled 350m was approximately the correct gross figure. Indeed some say that figure is conservative because it was based on projections from an official figure dated from 2014 that put the gross at closer to 450m. I'm guessing 2014 was high because of financial bailouts still being paid into the EU coffers. From the ruling statement: “The alleged offence set out in the Application for Summons is that the Claimant “repeatedly made and endorsed false and misleading statements concerning the cost of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union”. It appears that if the Claimant had said/endorsed a figure of £350m per week gross, or £250m per week net, there would have been no complaint.” https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc-1709-admin-johnson-v-westminster-mags-final.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc... (search in doc for "350" to find the juicy bits)

rusk 7y ago

> I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? Because it makes you look like a fool. Doesn’t mean it won’t work though. Bojo apparently targetting the segment for whom this kind thing goes over their heads

Rainymood 7y ago
Then I'd argue that we are the greater fools for letting this happen without any consequences. Personally I think this is a genius move by Bojo and something that should be applauded by hackers (this is Hacker News after all). It literally hacks the system, and I think it's beautiful.
- croon 7y ago
  It's genius in the same way as crawling over websites looking for a 90s relic to inject "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS x;". Personally I don't deem anything genius simply on the merit that "it works".
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Then I'd argue that we are the greater fools for letting this happen without any consequences. Letting what exactly happen? Him using a phrase that might or might not have been intended to make a previous story fall in search results? As if the original story about the model could not still be in the front pages of newspapers and websites, and so on? That's not even half an accusation... The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal (in the real sense of the people's will being followed) than "the PM used a SEO phrase..."....
  - m-i-l 7y ago
    "The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal" The public did not vote for something specific - they voted for something very vague and ill defined, the little information they were provided was incorrect (e.g. "an extra £350m a week for the NHS"), nobody had anything even approaching a plan, the whole thing was a shambolic amateur affair, and that's one of the reasons it has taken so long and cost so much to get nowhere. The only vaguely professional part was the manipulation of the small majority via social media (Cambridge Analytica etc.) That is the bigger democratic scandal - the fact that we can no longer have nice things like democracy thanks to the abuse of technology by arrogant thugs from expensive schools, which is the original point of the parent.

ollybee 7y ago

Not the first time he has been accused of this https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/1143808921074843648?lang=en https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/114380892107484364...

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
I think the case is stronger now. This happening once might just be co-incidence. Twice, not so much.

demarq 7y ago

So appalled but... So impressed!

thrwasyfjt 7y ago

I'm shocked that this works on a technical level, simply because a lot of words we use are ambiguous, so Google's algorithms are impressively good at picking up what we're really searching for. I'm constantly amazed to see the correct search results, and almost never have to add clarifying terms, even when I have to admit that I am being quite ambiguous. So I never would have expected this to be possible, let alone exploitable.

mxcrossb 7y ago
I don’t think it really does work? When I search, the hidden story appears again.

doctorpangloss 7y ago

The funnier thing to me is the people in the thread talking about how DuckDuckGo finds the "right" results. DuckDuckGo is just Yahoo. I think the results are something like 99.9% the same, so whatever is the 0.1% they add, when I did the search, it results in maybe a slight difference in link ordering. The reason it finds the "right" results is also the same reason its results are such garbage. And this is coming from someone whose default search is DuckDuckGo.

Paianni 7y ago
and Yahoo is just Bing nowadays.
petargyurov 7y ago
> its results are such garbage Whenever people complain about DDG's search results I am always a bit baffled. It works 95% of the time for me and that 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug. I know this is your word against mine but "garbage" is a bit of an exaggeration.
- k3liutZu 7y ago
  > 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug I think these are a majority of my searches, hence I had to switch back to google as DDG was almost never finding me any relevant result.
  - swebs 7y ago
    Try Startpage. It uses Google results, but anonymized and without personalization.
  - majjam 7y ago
    You don't just use the bangs (g!)? Or is that what you mean by switching back?
  - maest 7y ago
    For balance, i find around 30% of results to be bad. One really annoying thing is that python searches keep surfacing the python2 official docs instead of the python3 ones. Ddg is my main search engine, but I find I fall back to g! queries more and more often.

shard972 7y ago

It's amazing how it's actually the right wing parties who are tech savvy.

goatinaboat 7y ago

Boris has always been an expert at saying one thing to the people in the room but something else to people reading about his speech afterwards. Now he’s taking it to the next level. Kudos!

janpot 7y ago

I think I've heard about this tactic before, where it was used to help victims of revenge porn. It was used to push unwanted search results for their names away from the top in Google.

ewidar 7y ago

> I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? Well there was a story on french president Macron who was apparently thinking of renaming the ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France) to "Institut Superieur des Fonctionaires", ISF in short (http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par-l-isf-l-elysee-dement-20190423 http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par... sorry it's in French). But ISF is also the short name of the tax on the richest, which he has gotten rid of amid a lot of controversy. They didn't end up renaming ENA to ISF, but that would have been a great way to play the SEO game so that searching for "Macron ISF" may have in the future returned results on the school rather than the tax.

duxut_staglatz 7y ago
Describing the ENA as a university is misleading [0]: its does no research and does grant degrees [1]. All "students" are civil servant in training that have been hired through the civil service examinations and will go on to their jobs. They spend more than half of their "studies" working already to learn on the job. It's like saying Parris Island is a university. [0] In my opinion, this characterization as university stenghtens (a bit) its critics. After all, how come one small university has an almost monopoly on high ranking civil servants and then on top politicians? It should not be the case. But if you see it as a civil servant training program it is obvious how it comes to be - it's like wondering why so many US Army officers come form West Point - well, that's because West Point is there to produce US Army officers. [1] Well it does in partnership with universities, but not for its main civil servant training program
- ganzuul 7y ago
  How can you miss the point so intently?
  - duxut_staglatz 7y ago
    This is only a reply to: "ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France)", and not to the ENA->ISF name change.

azangru 7y ago

While fascinating, if this is a deliberate strategy, I wonder what its intended effect is supposed to be. Are people curious enough to google for stories about Johnson's alleged affair with the American woman going to be satisfied with the "model of restraint" quote? Are they going to forget what they have just been searching for, get immediately distracted and go read what this model of restraint business is all about? Do we have any inkling as to whether this works at all?

IMTDb 7y ago
No, but it makes the alleged affair look a lot less important. If a news story is not even on the first page of google results, is it even that big of a deal ?
- gowld 7y ago
  The only things that matter are what is on the front page for a vague search term? If you remove the vague extra word "model", the alleged affair is still on the first page pof results for "Boris johnson". Also, if you want news, perhaps you could...read a news site, not just stop at whatever Google suggests as 10 headlines related to a three word query
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Actually the alleged affair, is not the important bit. The important bit is him appearing to mis-use public funds for a friend ( whether that friend was with benefits or not ).
pflenker 7y ago
If I committed murder and wanted to hide the body, I would hide it on Page 2 of the search results. No one goes there. After all, if the first x results are not what you were looking for, how likely is it that the next x results will provide a match?
- azangru 7y ago
  That's totally fair if the user doesn't know what they are searching for (e.g. if the only search criterion is Boris Johnson); but if they already know that there is a body; if they have already heard about the model (or the bus), how likely are they to be put off the scent by irrelevant search results?

coldtea 7y ago

The level of paranoia in the Twitter thread is worrying...

dtf 7y ago
Welcome to #FBPE Twitter.
- kmlx 7y ago
  i'd say welcome to twitter. the trashcan of our times.

AznHisoka 7y ago

My respect level for Boris actually went up a few notches after reading about this :)

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
Indeed. The "lovable bumbling fool" image he puts across is a very conscious choice on his part. Despite what you think about his politics (and I'm personally not a fan) you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think. In playing the political game at least, definitely so. Lots of reports from coworkers (especially from the Foreign Office) that he is genuinely as clueless as he comes across when it comes to other elements of his job.
  - rusk 7y ago
    Indeed, he is completely unproven in any matters of statecraft and has been founding wanting in actual matters of substance on many occasions.
  - verbify 7y ago
    The news story that really made me believe that the bumbling fool shtick is real and not just an act was when he went to a buddhist temple in Myanmar and started reciting a colonial-era Kipling poem about a British soldier reminiscing about a Burmese girl that he kissed - until the ambassador intervened and told him it wasn't appropriate. If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three wars the British fought to suppress Burmese independence) then he would've never recited the poem. But he is a 'well-trained idiot' - he's had an English classical education, so he knows Kipling, but he doesn't understand what it actually _means_ ('oh yeah, I totally was going to shag a girl when we were fighting in Burma') or how it would come across to someone who wasn't also from a classically trained English background. So I think he is a clueless bumbling idiot. He, and Jacobs Rees-Moggs, are the British equivalent of a Texan politician who wears a cowboy hat and talks about their guns all the time. The story is available here - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johns...

fnord123 7y ago

Maybe he's trying to hide potential results from "Boris Johnson restraint" Now get that image out of your mind. ;)

krick 7y ago

Wow, that's damn impressive. It makes me consider to start following politics, I wonder what other fantastic moves this guy (or somebody else) routinely uses that I never heard of.

olivierduval 7y ago

The most worrying for me? Even after countless updates to their algorithms, breakthrough AI and ML, breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics :-( Or is Google biased toward "official" speech (even from a really-not-trustable source) like Twitter is when it will allow BS from a President (because it's an official account so not subject to moderation) or like FB is when deciding to NOT fact-check President obvious fake-news for the same reason ? Maybe it's time to clearly distinguish 2 activities: search on one side, that has to be exhaustive, fact-checked, ranked by differences/complementarity (no use to show 10 times the same result, better to show 10 really different result with indication of common consensus) - and news of the day, where truth is much more "volatile" ?

H8crilA 7y ago
I mean the query "Boris Johnson model" is genuinely ambiguous, it's a property of language rather than Google. There are a lot of queries out there that are truly ambiguous. Can't reproduce the "wrong" result locally, but I bet the results for the "woman model" interpretation are just below the results for the "model of restraint" interpretation.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  The question is whether Google is supposed to be a neutral media or a biased one. But besides that - most of the time I myself would prefer if Google served more diverse than more popular results. E.g. seeing several most popular results for a term from every month this year will have way more information than 20 different content copies for the same event popular right now
akerro 7y ago
> breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics Google wasn't tricked, it's intentional. Their business model is generating money from clicks. It's not showing you best results for what you search for. It's showing latest news, tragedy, and what people talk about. 10h old news? OLD, BORING. New shiny 2h young news? YEA, more clicks, clicks and more click, more ads, more clicks, more revenue. The sponsored content online must be constantly changing and adapting to new information to generate more profits and more clicks and keep people clicking and visiting and searching. Don't forget that it's not only sponsored content, but also targeted content with user tracking, because clicks count, on one day they will show you news to annoy you to generate more searches and clicks, on another day they will show you majority of stuff to calm you down. Keep clicking.

biscotte_ 7y ago

Definitely more clever than asking Google to reove the results, like Hillary Clinton did during the campaign wrt. Searches on her health.

dtf 7y ago

This is just silly. The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a model. It would be like searching for info about (UK supreme court president) Lady Hale by Googling “barmaid”. Try instead searching for “Boris Johnson technology lessons”, or indeed “Boris Johnson thigh”. Has his team SEO’d that yet?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nbevans 7y ago
He can SEO the "thigh" one with some sort of sentence along the lines "nobody ever got sick eating the thigh of a chlorinated American chicken!"
playpause 7y ago
> The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a model. Sky News: "Boris Johnson: 'No interest to declare' over links with former model Jennifer Arcuri" The Mirror: "Boris Johnson 'had affair with ex-model Jennifer Arcuri while London mayor'" The Sun: "Who is Jennifer Arcuri? Model connected to Boris Johnson" The Independent: "Jennifer Arcuri: Boris Johnson repeatedly refuses to deny affair with ex-model awarded public funds and access"
- dtf 7y ago
  Fair point. Looks like I read the wrong newspapers! Anyway... BREAKING: this particular ex-model's just had her laptop stolen while she was in the UK... containing 6 years of emails, documents, photos and personal who-knows-what from the time when she was reportedly giving technology lessons to our now Prime Minister. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Arcuri-terrified-laptop-close-Boris-Johnson-stolen.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Ar...
  - makomk 7y ago
    Arguably it should be the last thing anyone would know about Arcuri - treating everything else a woman in tech has done as irrelevant because she once modelled would normally be a fringe and controversial opinion, to put it lightly - but that's not how the press is framing this story.

onemoresoop 7y ago

Boris is a cunning boy. Why hasn’t (Barbara) Stresisand effect eaten got by now?

WebDanube 7y ago

As a non-Brit, I'm quite impressed by his ploy. I feel the comparison between him and the POTUS are unfair to him. He's way smarter and more tech savvy than his counterpart across the pond.

thinkingemote 7y ago
It's not him it's his advisors whether independent or part of the civil service PR dept. If he's clever it's that, like any good manager, he delegates to others.

matthewblott 7y ago

Hmm, you sure about this? I just googled "boris johnson model" and got nothing but results about affairs and Jennifer Arcuri.

hollander 7y ago
Nobody can be sure about this except google itself, because google gives different results for each user or location. I get all the affairs as well, but I don't matter to BJ as I'm not a UK citizen and won't vote.
- photoangell 7y ago
  Just for fun, I connected through a VPN (private internet access) and googled via a fresh firefox private window and the majority of the results are about his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri. A couple of results at the bottom of the page are about his "model of restraint" quote, that's it!

guiriduro 7y ago

There should be a word for this, perhaps content or SEO masking, its definitely a thing. I first experienced the practice in regard to an unscrupulous company - whose sales techniques involve misrepresentation (I know as I was briefly trained in them, years ago) - called Marcus Evans. They also run business events, so if you were to look their name up in reference to 'scam' or 'fraud', then details of their 'fraud prevention' event would show up first. Luckily, it looks like someone more skilled in SEO has kicked them down the first page of google, deservedly, or perhaps Google's algorithms have improved since.

CraneWorm 7y ago

This just makes me sick. I admit, it was clever the first time. Now it's just an horrible person getting away with it.

synt4x1k0 7y ago

Wouldn't this require him to know how he is going to be quoted in advance? Should everyone be so readily accepting that this is some genius level of foresight?

learnstats2 7y ago
It's hardly genius and it's hardly coming from Boris. His press team will have told him to drop in particular words or phrases repeatedly - if we hear it once, he has probably said it multiple times.
- synt4x1k0 7y ago
  Is there evidence of this happening though? It just seems like this is a screenshot with some comments on it, and a lot of assumptions.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    The evidence is the pattern of behavior. No, it's not conclusive of the fact, the accusation is based on circumstantial evidence, but it is still evidence.

sshagent 7y ago

I can foresee the next step of this, as politicians try and seed the SOE terms for their opposition with their speeches. We could be due an era of complete gibberish from politicians instead of just lies (note: i direct "lies" to all politicians not to JUST Boris )

csswizardry 7y ago

My pals cracked this one back in June! https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo-strategist https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-...

OJFord 7y ago
Plugging a mate's blog or not, this is much more interesting and informative than '<screenshot> omg the world is so corrupt' & some guy tweeting speculation.

foobarbecue 7y ago

Yet another reason we need synonym-aware search. Google should do nlp to find which "model" is being used in the page and then ask you which one you meant.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Far from unique to BoJo. This is a wildly successful strategy, which also explains the outrageous and obvious lying (e.g. in front of dozens of press saying "there's no press here"). It's not new. Many of the internet era populists currently so successful have used it. Trump was the first time I saw it, but perhaps it goes back further. Each and every time he lies, misremembers and drops in a search term he makes it harder to disprove as both sides get reported. The original story and the the reports of the use of the lie. Both in the respected media, not just a random blogspot. Frequently they're both running at the same time. With Trump the Democrats and media spent to much time "fact checking" to see the strategy. Ours have done no better with BoJo, despite seeing it played out so successfully in the US. It completely burns the post-war expectation that politicians be honest, and plays all sides as effectively. I'd love to know where it really originated.

osullivj 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

vfc1 7y ago

This sounds like another silly conspiracy theory to me, what is most likely happening is the exact opposite. These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to generate advertising revenue. It's the cheap websites doing SEO based on popular Boris Johnson terms, and not Boris Johnson's team. I mean the risk of someone in his staff of multiple people that would have to know about this to leak that he was doing it to the press just to push down on google searches unfavorable news would be huge. One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any sense.

rsynnott 7y ago
> These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to generate advertising revenue. The three websites mentioned are amongst the UK's biggest news websites, reporting on legitimate Boris-related news (ie his alleged affair with Arcuri and his rather farcical claim that he's a model of restraint). The claim in the tweet is that Boris used the wording 'model of restraint' to try to mask the other story, though if this is true it clearly didn't work very well. It's credible mostly because of the prior bus incident; it's actually a fairly reasonable explanation for Boris spouting what otherwise appeared to be contextless nonsense. > One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any sense. Wait, you think _this_ would be the controversy to sink Boris Johnson? Really? Boris is now so unpopular that the people who still like him are largely almost unshakeable, but even before his recent troubles, this would not have moved the dial.
- vfc1 7y ago
  If he tried to use the sentence model of restraint to bury on Google results the stories about his affair with a model, it would never work because the front page of google has 10 results, surely both stories (model of restraint and affair stories) will rank in the top results. At most, he might be able to divert some of the traffic from one article to the other, but no more. If that is what people are accusing him, it might be true it's possible that he is being advised to use this political SEO strategy, to try to divert internet attention from one story to the other. But the results would be unpredictable and marginal at best.

_-___________-_ 7y ago

The media could probably recognise this tactic and refuse to support it, by paraphrasing that part of his quote, e.g. PM emphasises his "restraint" amid Parliament language row

hans_castorp 7y ago

Another good reason to stop using Google and use alternative search engines.

HenryBemis 7y ago

John Oliver mentioned this in his show, Last Week Tonight a couple of months ago [0]. Boris is a snake with a smart team behind him. He wants to divide and he creates more tension and hatred instead of providing solutions. He follows the steps of the Oompa Loompa across the pond. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k Edit: this post will be sooooo bad for the "karma points" but it's 100% accurate on BoJo the Bozo.

concordDance 7y ago
You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  If you see any other comment I make (and I don't expect anyone to spend 1 second on seeing my other opinions) I am always positive an open minded. Right now this snake is threatening my well being, my income, my life balance. I don't take that lightly. This snake is also being reckless with a neighboring country, Ireland, and with his dangerous and careless actions he is risking to throw them to another decade of Troubles (look it up). My negativity hurt your eyes. His actions may cause deaths. You're right. I'm to blame. Edit: I actually upvoted your comment, you are right on calling out my comment :)
  - compuguy 7y ago
    I saw that Last Week Tonight segment. I agree with your original post.
  - concordDance 7y ago
    > My negativity hurt your eyes. That's uncharitable. I believe your rhetoric hurts the culture and quality of discussion of hackernews. I have seen quite a number of places degenerate into partisan (I don't strictly mean USA Dems vs Reps, but Culture War sides) namecalling, normally shortly before one side completely drives out the other and degenerates into a virtue-signalling circle jerk. While that may be hackernews' inevitable fate I want to put it off as long as possible.

known 7y ago

Is he buying adwords?

NicoJuicy 7y ago

Not that much of an idiot as I thought. On hiding criminal behavior at least. Normally it means a lot of experience in that.

dx034 7y ago
An idiot wouldn't get to be tory leader. He wants to be portrayed as a lovable idiot but it doesn't mean he is one. I doubt we ever see any part of his real personality in public. Doesn't mean he can be a good prime minister though, being good at politics isn't the only thing that matters for the job.

alecco 7y ago

Or perhaps after 10hs the older news articles faded out. Occam's razor.

demarq 7y ago

Politicians are now also under the Google algorithms. Which gives Google unprecedented power.

sergiomattei 7y ago

Apparently this is a known strategy. https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1143585761842933760 https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/11435857618429...

IAmGraydon 7y ago

We should probably pause for a moment and at least consider whether the true manipulator is the guy who originally posted it on Twitter. As far as I can see, no one has been able to duplicate his “results”. I’m not accusing, but would be interested in seeing confirmation from another party.

sacado2 7y ago

At first I read it backwards, I thought he had had sex with a model just to hide a scandal about a "model of restraint" and thought " wow, that guy is really doing all he can to hide the scandal". And then I remembered it was not France and having an affair could be a scandal, and I'm a little disappointed because I preferred my version.

jnty 7y ago
To be fair, the affair is only the scandal because it may have caused a conflict of interest. Boris has had plenty of them in the past, to the point where nobody knows for certain how many children he has.
- stochastic_monk 7y ago
  Correct. It's the corruption that has his critics seeing blood in the water. Visiting your affair's home during work hours while funneling money into her business and taking her on trips she has no reason to be on to boost her career is what's the problem, not the affair. The fact that the affair has been admitted matters only because it bolsters corruption allegations.
- pysxul 7y ago
  French here, I second this. - Jacques Chirac had an affair - Francois Holland also had one (quite funny he would sneak out on a motorbike to visit his mistress) - There is growing rumours on Emmanuel Macron being secretly Gay and being married to Brigitte is a cover On a side note, someone personal life choices has no impact on their work as politicians so that kind of "scandal" are not that big of a deal in France. It only increase the sales of gossip magazines.

buboard 7y ago

Quite impressive knowledge of technology. Why do people think this is a bad thing? Certainly saves on PR costs.

charlus 7y ago

It's important to be skeptical about this, but it's somewhat fun to entertain as a way of neutralising any potential attack lines for upcoming elections. So far: * Buses * Models * Bridges 3 is a pattern. Maybe we could anticipate future subjects being letter boxes, water cannons, watermelons, Iran, etc.

dalbasal 7y ago

I'm skeptical. (a)When I search "Boris Johnson model," I still get the Jennifer Arcuri results and (b) even if working perfectly, this kind of SEO spamming would be pretty marginal. People are exposed to the "model" story via so many avenues: TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms... It just doesn't seem worth it. At best it takes like 10% of the heat off him for a day. Null hypothesis is that Boris just says a lot of random, baffling shit and everything makes the news.

dangerface 7y ago
The problem is that the "model" story faces the same exposure on TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms...
IshKebab 7y ago
Yeah me too. I've read a fair bit about the story and I didn't even know she was a model. She's mostly mentioned by name, and called an entrepreneur or businesswoman - not a model.
repolfx 7y ago
But using the word "model" to mean "a model of good behaviour" which is what it meant in that context is totally normal English. And Boris has been associated with buses for ages, in his time as London mayor a revamp of the buses became known as literally "Boris Buses". The idea he might have an eccentric hobby involving buses is entirely plausible. I don't think Boris says random baffling shit. I think the null hypothesis is that a whole lot of Brexit-haters have fully immersed themselves in conspiracy theories, to the extent that normal English words used in interviews is now being described as SEO. It looks comparable to how in America a whole lot of Hillary Clinton supporters ended up believing in a conspiracy theory that said their president was a Russian spy. Any even slightly conservative leader seems to bring this out in some people ... it's a need to see evil plots to explain the phenomenon of people who disagree.
- meowface 7y ago
  The thing is in this case, Boris has been caught red-handed doing very similar sorts of "cunning disguised as idiocy" ploys before. For example, feigning forgetting speeches. It seems plausible that it was intentional. Both sides of the political aisle are certainly highly susceptible to conspiracy theories about the opposition, but this case seems pretty interesting. It may be a wolf-crying situation, too: since Boris has likely done it before (I disagree with you and think the bus thing was SEO gaming, though this one may not be since the chance of coincidence is likely due to it being common word usage), people are going to start seeing it even when it isn't happening.

wila 7y ago

A smart online newspaper that suddenly sees a lot of hits on their "model bus" article would seize that opportunity. They could rewrite the URL and show an inbetween page that says something along the lines of "we see you are interested in Boris Johnson & models" you might also like ... Then they could add another article about SEO poisening. Now THAT would be great reporting! Not sure if any of them are keen enough to seize that opportunity.. edit: Of course an even easier way to do so is to edit the model bus article and insert a clickable "news headline"

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Once is not a pattern. Without a pattern this is simply Twitter being Twitter. That is,misguided people - the type that don't understand correlation from cause - are having their free time sucked up, and they like it that way. Find a pattern. Let's discuss that.

invalidusernam3 7y ago
This isn't the first time this has been brought up: https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo-strategist https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-...

nmeofthestate 7y ago

This is up there with "I was talking about X with my friend, and half an hour later I saw a Google ad for X. Ergo, Google are listening in on my phone's microphone."

quirkafleeg3 7y ago
I've had this happen before, and it was just a little bit very creepy indeed, and did make me wonder.
nmeofthestate 7y ago
Apparently, rational HN readers don't require any actual evidence before going with the assertion that "Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews". Crazy times.

realradicalwash 7y ago

the conservatives seem to be way ahead of the others when it comes to modern technology/media. we've seen physicists being hired to plan where to knock on doors [0], very targeted social media ads based on proper data analysis, and now apparently SEO hacking. not sure that these are good developments; but they seem irreversible and labour/the libdems want to catch up asap if they want to stay relevant. [0] as mentioned by Cummings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4

kitd 7y ago

See also "Boris Johnson & Kippers" [1] ("kipper" is a nickname for a member of UKIP, a right-wing pro-Brexit political party) He was talking about buses on the radio again this morning, as was Sajid Javid, the chancellor, yesterday. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers-eu-isle-of-man_uk_5d30a0d4e4b004b6adacb0e2 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers...

rainforest 7y ago
The "spineless chicken" Corbyn attack could also have been to muddy the "chlorinated chicken" association too.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

air7 7y ago

This has never crossed my mind as a possibility. It's ingenious. I wonder if/when this has ever been done before. On second thought in a broader way this idea, of masking truth by hiding it behind something similar, is quite old. For example the idea that Pagan holidays were turned into Christian ones in an effort to erase them.

mlang23 7y ago

I don't care. I want BREXIT now, since the british voted for it. All these delays are poison for democracy. Hard brexit yesterday. And if the pro EU people want to join again, they can apply in 5 years if they manage to find a majority. And now, let the downvotes come.

Lendal 7y ago
What you're asking for is Brexit by fiat, the opposite of democracy. The reason it hasn't happened yet is precisely because of democracy. People can't agree. Everyone wants it their way, but everyone can't have their way. Someone must volunteer to be the loser. If you had Brexit by fiat, it would have happened already.
walshemj 7y ago
Read the words on the paper it was an advisory vote not a binding one.
ineedasername 7y ago
People voted for Brexit, sure, but two problems come to mind when trying to use that fact as support for crashing out of the UK: 1) People did not, when voting, stipulate what sort or Brexit they wanted, but they were promised an orderly exit with a great deal that would preserve the benefits of EU membership. And in polls since then, they have overwhelmingly said they do not want no-deal. This places the democratic path firmly on the side of "let's get a deal done the right way." Though with no majority agreeing on "the right way" is a problem, it's one for democratic compromise to solve, and that can take time. 2) Appealing to the 2016 will of the people ignores the fact that democracies don't vote one and never ever ever touch on the same topic again. In fact there are votes every few years so that, if people change their minds, that can be reflected in government. Personally I think going back on Brexit at this point would be bad for the UK as a society, if not so much as an economy, but there's nothing undemocratic about people saying, "I made a choice, I've since learned a little more about it and don't like it anymore. Let's vote to see if enough people feel the same way."
- mlang23 7y ago

rsynnott 7y ago

This really raises the question of what news story involving 'bowling' and 'green' was around in early 2017.

rebolek 7y ago

Just a reminder that Boris Johnson is not an elected leader.

Someone1234 7y ago
You're simply "reminding" people of how a parliamentary democracy works. Plus it is inaccurate, he was elected, against Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, and other candidates in the Conservative Party Leadership race. Voted on by MPs who the public themselves feel were qualified to represent them in a representative democracy. I have no love for Boris Johnson (nor the Conservative Party itself). But this kind of "not a democratic leader!" line is simply spreading misinformation about how the UK's system of government works. You vote for MPs, MPs vote for stuff on your behalf, and in this case they voted for the leader of their party (and now the government). It should also be noted that the UK doesn't have a ruling king and it doesn't have a president. The PMs power is a lot more curtailed than some other countries that do, and they need to go back to Parliament to accomplish much of their agenda (and are equally subject to the law). If they lose their voting majority, they're hugely neutered.
- pierrebai 7y ago
  A large proprotion of people vote for the parties or the leaders of parties, not the individual who happens to be the MP in the circumscription. I certainly do put more weigh on the party's program than on a choice of a local shmuck among multiple local smucks.
- pjc50 7y ago
  However, he's lost his majority due to throwing about 20 MPs out of the party. This is a really, really odd situation; Schroedinger's PM. At some point, probably very soon, the confidence vote is going to be held and we find out whether he has a majority or not. He's also trying to talk up whether he's really subject to the law or not, specifically in regard to the Benn Act against no-deal.
- sergioj97 7y ago
  I think he commented that only because the OP said "even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders".

rpmisms 7y ago

Human SEO. What a clever tactic. This is essentially adding noise to signal--what Trump does to the media, just a little more tech-savvy. The steps: -An issue comes out that makes you look bad -You take a question and respond in a boring, non-memorable way -Then you go off on wild, ridiculous tangents that everyone guffaws at until the next news cycle.

ortusdux 7y ago

Reminds me of the conspiracy theory that Disney named the movie Frozen so that it would drown out searches about Walt freezing his head.

tantalor 7y ago

This is a case of "Streisand effect"

satysin 7y ago

I made a throwaway suggestion he was doing this a few months back on reddit when he brought "bus" into the conversation [0] I wish I had started keeping track of things he says to see how his comments impact search results. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris_johnson_makes_and_paints_buses_for_a_hobby/es5o3sk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris...

gowld 7y ago
And this theory was just as absurd last time. Johnson has been talking about buses of various kinds for decades. He doesn't control when his bus claims make news.
- satysin 7y ago
  I disagree. Calling it “absurd” is synonymous with calling it illogical when in fact it is extremely logical for Boris to use keywords to bury hits in search results. IMHO it is a smart way to game the system to his advantage.

JamesBaxter 7y ago

This is an interesting idea but is it possible that in this case the reason the top story has changed is because it’s newer?

gowld 7y ago

This was debunked last time it went around. People don't understand coincidences. Johnson has lived a long life. Buses are common. He's painted buses for a long time, and he used a bus in his Brexit campaign. Johnson says a lot of things; that's been his job for decades. This conspiracy is the same as the now that says Facebook was recording everything you say and putting it in ads.

rajaganesh87 7y ago

Finally, a politician who understands tech

usrusr 7y ago

Time to re-read Stephenson's (well, "Stephen Bury") Interface. I don't remember it as a particularly good read, but it might be great fun to contrast the innocuously blunt politicization of mediatech envisioned 25 years ago with the realities of the Trump/Johnson way of playing democracy.

ineedasername 7y ago

At least in the case of the search, "boris johnson model", the tactic isn't working anymore. "boris johnson bus" on the other hand still shows a bunch of his model-building bus stories. However, if you change it to "boris johnson london bus" then you get some top results that include the controversial red bus.

NoblePublius 7y ago

Algorithmic news is fake news

ineedasername 7y ago
It's not algorithmic news; It's the ordered presentation of news via algorithmic methods.

burtonator 7y ago

Boris Johnson is like the mesothelioma of UK politics. He just looks seems like the kind of guy who buys real estate while playing online gambling on viagra. He's only interested in fast cash. He desperately needs advice but isn't going to get my free consultation. Maybe he can use a gift certificate though. Hopefully he accepts credit cards for this limited time offer. Operators are standing by.

_bxg1 7y ago

People like to compare him to Donald Trump, but what I've always read is that unlike Trump he's actually quite intelligent. For better or worse.

doctorRetro 7y ago

That's actually pretty clever. Credit where it's due.

seamyb88 7y ago

Is it any wonder that Dominic Cummings wants to leave the GDPR, sorry I mean the EU.

ssivark 7y ago

“The medium is the message.” — Marshall McLuhan As an aside, these are the kinds of things that people worry about, when they worry about (ML) algorithms “overfitting” to a particular proxy target/metric.

biffosmitho 7y ago

Might explain something. I raised a petition to use Sunday Voting to beat the Tories & DUP (it gives 15-20% bigger turnouts - nearly all left of centre). On the very next week Johnson came up with a change to the election day to a Monday (the first change since 1931) and almost immediately it was rejected for "religious reasons" - That sounds very fishy to me. Fight back and sign: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133