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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?

#161
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

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

#162

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

But not as a politician, I hope! He's clever to a certain extent, and a good talker, but he's only in politics for his 5 minutes of fame, IMHO.

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

#163
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...

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

#164

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

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.

The problem is BoJo isn't that his smarter than others thinks. It's that he's not as smart as he thinks he is.

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

#165
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you miss the point so intently?

I just learned something because of his post. I always thought that the ENA was similar to the Ecole de Petrole (a prestigious engineering school) but for economics or something like that.

[deleted]

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not the point. The topic of the article is clear.

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

#167

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…

The problem is that the "model" story faces the same exposure on TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, other search terms...

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

#168

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.

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.

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

#169

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."

I've had this happen before, and it was just a little bit very creepy indeed, and did make me wonder.

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

#170

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

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.

EU Structural and Investment Fund allocated £8.4bn for UK for 2014-2020, £1000pp in Cornwall & West Wales alone. Similar funds for 2007-2013 are estimated to have created 70k jobs in the north of England, and 80k in Scotland & Wales. [1]

I wish I had your casual nonchalance about how these regions will be affected post-Brexit.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/01/mapped-where-in-...

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