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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?

#231

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.

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

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

#233

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

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 demo…

I think he commented that only because the OP said "even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders".

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

#234

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.

Being a gifted student as a kid doesn't necessarily translate into being an intelligent or wise adult. If you don't cultivate it properly then it either goes to waste or gets spent on stupid or petty nonsense, like the attention whoring Boris Johnson seems addicted to.

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

#235

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."

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.

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

#236

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.

Two issues with your statement

1) The claim was rubbish, that amount doesn't leave the treasury

2) The EU does fund NHS projects

However it was a powerful message that kept on being repeated by the incredulous remain side, doing the propaganda work for Leave, it's an interesting "hack" in many ways. 90% of people pay no attention to politics, when all they see is a single policy "vote X and get more money for NHS", that's all they'll remember.

It doesn't matter that it's a lie, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. When your enemy is repeating your lie for you, you win.

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

#237
post #223

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...

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.

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.

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

#238
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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") Well, you never have full information, even if you're the PM and passing a new law. As for the "an extra £350m a week for the NHS", I'm pretty sure all the sides had their misinformation at the ready, there was so muc…

> It didn't see the outcome of that vote yet though

The referendum was very explicitly non-binding. 'The outcome of that vote' was achieved simply by publishing the results.

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

#239
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but he's always been lazy and unwilling to do much actual work, apparently [1] his headmaster wrote to his father in 1982: Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies... Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half): I thi…

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…

A Telegraph deputy editor was on the BBC news channel a few days ago reviewing the newspaper headlines, she could barely string sentences together but her accent suggested that she had been to a very good school.

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

#240
post #185
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, cl…

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.

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