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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?

#201

Post by meowface »

sorokod wrote: post #112
afarrell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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so even if each instance is eventually caught, it may successfully push down recent news / current events until they're no longer current, which may result in millions of people missing the reporting.

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

#202

Post by wastedhours »

peteretep wrote: post #152
wastedhours wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

He got a scholarship to Eton and then one to Oxford. They don’t give those out with the papers, even to rich kids. We can say he is very bright without any qualification.

We can say he leveraged his privilege well, and I think that's different than offering someone blanket praise of being "bright".

And again, I'm not necessarily making judgement on his academic credentials - I made the point about his jobs. Of which a classical education is evidently rather worthless. With the exception of being a player of politics and narratives.

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

#205

Post by rjf72 »

wastedhours wrote: post #42
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

When a coworker chooses to negatively gossip to the media about somebody, and the media finds it click-worthy, do you think this is going to be a characteristic and unsampled bias of that person or other's perception of them?

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

#206

Post by meowface »

repolfx wrote: post #196
dalbasal wrote: post #145

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…

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 hypo…

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.

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

#207

Post by kmlx »

phatfish wrote: post #192
kmlx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8 yes, he is much smarter than he looks.

Hopefully anyone that completed a degree in that focused on Ancient Greece/Classics could muster a reasonable performance in a debate like this, even if they couldn't manage a first ;) If anything his public speaking is above average, and the inflated ego and confidence that goes with attending Eton certainly helps with that. Nothing here shows any great intelligence, maybe marginally more than he likes to let on tho…

i didn't mention a "great intelligence", only "smarter than he looks", aka smarter than he leads us to believe.

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

#208

Post by kmlx »

TomVDB wrote: post #153
ganzuul wrote: post #141

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.

is Ecole de Petrole translated as School of Petroleum by any chance? 'cause that would be hilarious in our day and age.

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

#209

Post by 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...

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

#210

Post by sorokod »

meowface wrote: post #201
sorokod wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 s…

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