British Protesters are gaming Google’s algorithm to have ‘IDIOT’ as one of the name that appears to represent the US President Donald Trump.
The protesters have started publishing articles that associate the word “idiot” with Trump and have urged others to do the same. This is to have as many articles on Google so that when people input the term “idiot” a range of photos that will come out will be of Trump.
It’s not clear exactly how long Google’s closely guarded, and constantly changing, search algorithms work or how long Trump’s photos will be associated with that word.
This happens to be a similar situation with the on that happened in 2009, where Google gave a glimpse into the way its algorithm worked after users found that image searches for “Michelle Obama” rendered a racist photo of a monkey wearing earrings.
According to Google, “Sometimes Google search results from the internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.
In a further statement they said, “Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query. The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results.”
The Protests started with coverage of a campaign in the UK to get the Green Day song “American Idiot” to the top spot on UK charts in time for Trump’s four-day visit to Britain last week.
Many English articles about the campaign published last week had included the word “American Idiot” in their headlines and featured images of Trump, strengthening the link between the image and the keyword.
Since then, activists have been trying to prolong the trend by manipulating Google’s algorithm so photos of Trump remain on the image search results for “idiot.”
Other ways that may have the name ‘Idiot’ appear more may include publishing articles with the word in the headline accompanied by a photo of President Trump. This is also called “Google bombing.”
Accpording to the Guardian, People have also been upvoting posts containing a photo of him and the word “idiot” on Reddit.
News coverage of the trend, including articles like this one, is likely to compound the effect.
This is not the first time Donald Trump is facin g backlash and cyber bullying