
Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles? - pflenker
https://twitter.com/TheAndyMaturin/status/1178303707357892608
======
sincerely
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-
bus...](https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-buses-to-
manipulat-1835903361)

~~~
gowld
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
> 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'.

------
ewidar
> 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...](http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par-l-isf-l-
elysee-dement-20190423) 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
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

~~~
vonmoltke
> 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

US service academies and War Colleges are actually degree-granting
institutions, though.

~~~
duxut_staglatz
This is indeed a limit of my analogy. A closer equivalent would be bootcamp
for enlisted personel.

------
dalbasal
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.

~~~
repolfx
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
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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> 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.

Seems hard to blame him for this. Compare
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnaccustomedAsIA...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnaccustomedAsIAmToPublicSpeaking)
.

~~~
meowface
I don't blame him, really. I find it quite clever. But I think it's silly to
deny it and act like all apparent instances of it are baseless conspiracy
theories.

~~~
repolfx
But you have no evidence for any of this. It's literally a theory about some
hidden deeper motive of a government or leader, like all conspiracy theories.
There isn't one shred of evidence Boris makes up non existent hobbies to
(unsuccessfully) manipulate search results.

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

~~~
OJFord
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.

------
sacado2
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
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
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.

------
rusk
> 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

~~~
afarrell
Because empirically, it doesn't work. The front page of google for [Boris
Johnson bus] has stories about:

\- The failure of a busmaker

\- The brexit bus advert

\- The suspicion that his 'model bus' answer was this ploy.

~~~
sorokod
It is likely that Google is surfacing the matches it empirically considers
more relevant to you.

~~~
meowface
Possibly, but it's also a timeliness thing. This stuff has a window of
opportunity: for like a week after the interview, it'll successfully game the
results, but after that they may be crowded out by the reporting on the gaming
itself.

If he's trying to spike negative results for just a certain period of time,
it's quite an effective tactic. News cycles quickly, so even if each instance
is eventually caught, it may successfully push down recent news / current
events until they're no longer current, which may result in millions of people
missing the reporting.

~~~
sorokod
All this is possible and maybe even probable but not knowing how Google
determines relevancy, makes it impossible to reason about.

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

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
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
> 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.

~~~
verbify
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-
johns...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-
caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple)

~~~
drcongo
> 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.

That's exactly why he did it. He's a nasty, vindictive, racist colonialist.

~~~
verbify
I'm not saying he's not racist/colonialist. You only have to read his article
about 'flag-waving piccaninnies... tribal warriors will all break out in
watermelon smiles to see the big white chief...'
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-
view/3571742/If...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-
view/3571742/If-Blairs-so-good-at-running-the-Congo-let-him-stay-there.html).
Or his argument that Obama hated the UK because he was Kenyan and had an
'ancestral dislike of the British empire'. Or any of the other dozens
examples.

I'm just saying that if he's as smart as people claim, if the whole bumbling
idiot is a calculated act, then there's not much to benefit from idiotically
reciting that poem, it's not like there's some vast constituency in the
British public who love The Road to Mandalay. It's an obscure reference, most
British people have never heard of the poem... He seemed genuinely surprised
that he shouldn't recite the poem.

I think the bumbling idiot thing is genuine. That doesn't also exclude him
from being a nasty vindictive racist colonialist.

~~~
dajomu
Isn't it much the same thing as Trump saying something racist that he can kind
of get away with? Johnson can say it, incite some anger in people who won't
vote for him anyway, get his name on the news again and appeal to his base.
Many of his supporters are the kinds of people that want to "Make Britain
Great Again". There isn't a vast constituency in Britain who love the poem,
but there is a vast constituency who are mildly racist and look back to the
"good old days".

~~~
ridewinter
Yes, Churchill said plenty of stuff that was racist/misogamist even back in
those days. Bojo models himself after him. Btw I'm a big Churchill fan in
spite of all that. The flawed hero.

------
olivierduval
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" ?

~~~
akerro
> 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.

~~~
mda
Eh, so you want older news on this one but you probably want newer ones on
others? I don't think this rant makes any sense.

~~~
akerro
This isn't a rant, it's a statement of facts.

~~~
sergioj97
Seems like a rant to me. What exactly are you criticizing about the way Google
decides which results to show first, in this particular case?

~~~
akerro
I'm not necessary criticizing, but it's a bit sad that most popular search
engine turned to be manipulation and persuasion machine. I no longer thing
about it as search engine, more like "what's trendy network", BUT I recognize
that Google Search belongs to google and google is a business, and business
does what's most profitable! That's good for them, not necessary for us, I
personally almost never use google search, but I use android with google
account, just because duck duck go is better search engine and google android
is really comfortable.

------
dtf
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?

~~~
playpause
> 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
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-
Ar...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Arcuri-
terrified-laptop-close-Boris-Johnson-stolen.html)

~~~
makomk
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.

------
doctorpangloss
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.

~~~
petargyurov
> 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
> 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
Try Startpage. It uses Google results, but anonymized and without
personalization.

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

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

------
azangru
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?

~~~
pflenker
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
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?

~~~
pflenker
If you are already convinced that something is going on, then this will not
throw you off, no.

But if you are indifferent to the matter, then you will most likely quickly
give up, thinking that it can't be that important if it's not in the top
search results.

------
NeedMoreTea
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
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)

------
Havoc
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

------
IAmGraydon
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.

------
wila
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"

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

~~~
hollander
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
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!

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

~~~
dtf
Welcome to #FBPE Twitter.

~~~
kmlx
i'd say welcome to twitter. the trashcan of our times.

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

------
chiefalchemist
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
This isn't the first time this has been brought up:
[https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-
unlikely-...](https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo-
strategist)

------
janpot
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.

------
satysin
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...](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris_johnson_makes_and_paints_buses_for_a_hobby/es5o3sk/)

~~~
gowld
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
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.

------
krick
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.

------
biffosmitho
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)

------
fnord123
Maybe he's trying to hide potential results from "Boris Johnson restraint"

Now get that image out of your mind. ;)

------
charlus
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.

------
guiriduro
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.

------
demarq
So appalled but... So impressed!

------
sergiomattei
Apparently this is a known strategy.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/11435857618429...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1143585761842933760)

------
WebDanube
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
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.

------
goatinaboat
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!

------
synt4x1k0
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
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
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
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.

------
ineedasername
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.

------
gowld
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.

------
air7
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.

------
7thaccount
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
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.

~~~
nbevans
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...](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc-1709-admin-johnson-v-westminster-mags-
final.pdf) (search in doc for "350" to find the juicy bits)

~~~
scarygliders
Isn't it strange that any and all seemingly pro-Brexit posts here are being
downvoted.

What you posted is factually correct. From observation, HN has turned into
just another Slashdot, unfortunately. I came here to escape from Slashdot's
obvious liberal-biased bubble, but the infestation has happened here too. No
doubt this post will be downvoted into oblivion as well, including the other
replie(s) I've made on this topic. :(

~~~
IAmGraydon
No - it isn’t strange. This is Hacker News. We are here to talk about the
technical aspects of the alleged search manipulation, not your political
beliefs. It’s well known that political opinion isn’t on the table for
discussion here. If you want that kind of discourse, check out the politics
subreddit, where you will find oodles of children spouting their uninformed
political opinions.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It's not nearly that simple.

There have been plenty of non-flagged stories on both UK and US politics where
they deviate from the regular, with discussions that haven't descended into
flame war and a sea of greyed posts. Not specifically relating to tech, but
are exceptional in _some_ way. e.g. Brexit and the various constitutional
shenanigans, some surprise USSC or agency ruling etc.

Reasonable discourse has resulted with good points on both sides - along with
a minority of both sides playing it like reddit - black/white voting, and
absurd easily disproved comments.

The "day-to-day" and regular politics can stay in the reddit cesspit.

------
sshagent
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 )

------
ssivark
“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.

------
_-___________-_
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

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

------
foobarbecue
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.

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

~~~
Someone1234
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.

~~~
pjc50
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.

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

------
JamesBaxter
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?

------
realradicalwash
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)

------
rajaganesh87
Finally, a politician who understands tech

------
NicoJuicy
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
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.

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

------
rpmisms
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.

------
nmeofthestate
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."

~~~
nmeofthestate
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.

------
tantalor
This is a case of "Streisand effect"

------
kitd
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...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers-eu-
isle-of-man_uk_5d30a0d4e4b004b6adacb0e2)

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

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

------
usrusr
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.

------
known
Is he buying adwords?

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

------
demarq
Politicians are now also under the Google algorithms.

Which gives Google unprecedented power.

------
_bxg1
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.

------
HenryBemis
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
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
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
:)

~~~
concordDance
> 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.

------
NoblePublius
Algorithmic news is fake news

~~~
ineedasername
It's not algorithmic news; It's the _ordered presentation_ of news via
algorithmic methods.

------
seamyb88
Is it any wonder that Dominic Cummings wants to leave the GDPR, sorry I mean
the EU.

------
thrwasyfjt
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
I don’t think it really does work? When I search, the hidden story appears
again.

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

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

------
vfc1
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
> 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
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.

------
mlang23
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.

~~~
ineedasername
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
Oh, thats so british. "we want brexit, but we want a deal with all the
benefits". Another reason to want a hard brexit yesterday. The british play
this pick and choose game since they joined the EU. When push comes to shove,
they end up siding the the US, not even caring about EU policy. And the EUR
was also never really interesting to these classy brits. Sorry, but its time
to end this, fast.

