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

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

#141

Post by ganzuul »

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #45
ewidar wrote: post #14

> 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... sorry it's in French). But ISF is also the short name of the tax on the richest, which he has gotten r…

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 universi…

How can you miss the point so intently?

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

#142

Post by maehwasu »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #137
scarygliders wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they voted for something very vague and ill defined Utter tosh. The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme.

So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?

The common wisdom wrt democracy, for centuries, was that this was basically exactly how it would work, if actually implemented. These aren't unforeseen problems.

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

#143

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

bloogsy wrote: post #134
barry-cotter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one gets to be a Telegraph columnist without doing a ton of work, never mind Prime Minster of the UK. Being unwilling to do work purely on other people’s say so is a separate trait from being lazy. He also has a much better command of Ancient Greek than anyone unwilling to apply themselves could acquire however wonderful the teachers the were exposed to. This is quite apart from the question of whether he’s a buff…

No, but some people get to be Telegraph columnists and into positions of power without having to do as much work and face as much scrutiny as others because of their skin colour, their familial wealth and connections, and because they went an elite school.

I strongly disagree that skin colour has anything to do with it.

In reality the elite school doesn't even help.

It all comes down to wealth and connections.

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

#144

Post by pbhjpbhj »

m-i-l wrote: post #52
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someth…

"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 th…

>nobody had anything even approaching a plan //

Whoever told Cameron to put the referendum in the manifesto (I've a pet theory that the "fucking a pig's head" revelation was a shot across the bows for this one) certainly had a plan, and 2 PMs down the line they're still pushing for it.

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

#145

Post by 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.

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

#146

Post by ganzuul »

AznHisoka wrote: post #29

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

The key to choosing smart people for positions of power is that they are predictable, much like car traffic needs to be predictable to be safe. Smart people are consistent and act in a controlled manner when given information to process. However, when someone who should be predictable begins to hide information they become unaccountable and unfit for positions of power.

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

#147

Post by 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"

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

#148

Post by duxut_staglatz »

ganzuul wrote: post #141
duxut_staglatz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 universi…

How can you miss the point so intently?

This is only a reply to: "ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France)", and not to the ENA->ISF name change.

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

#149

Post by noir_lord »

verbify wrote: post #104
fiala__ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A Well-trained Idiot" describes the British Etonian elite so concisely I think it should become a technical term. Well done.

I've borrowed it from someone else (who was actually educated in Oxford, but not Eton), wish it were my own though.

For centuries a posh accent and certainty was enough for the class that ruled the UK.

One thing Brexit has successfully done is illustrate to all sides just how mediocre our leadership actually is.

Mediocre leaders are fine when the ship is sailing in calm waters to a known destination.

At the moment it feels like half of them want to steer into the iceberg and the other half want to abandon ship, with a few lone voices pointing out we could have just turned to port and swerved it.

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

#150

Post by pbhjpbhj »

scarygliders wrote: post #95
nbevans wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: “…

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…

As you go down the age scale, and up the education scale, you get higher support for Remain. Freedom of movement is probably much more important to entrepreneurs too -- if you support Brexit you're probably in a small minority on HN. Would make an interesting poll.
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