Search idiot find Trump on the world’s largest search engine

LONDON, U.K. - A pattern that was first spotted in the U.K., but was soon reported in several parts of the world has led to some giggles online and some added anger by the U.S. President Donald Trump. 

Earlier this week, reports noted that whenever anyone searched 'Idiot' on Google Images, pictures of Trump would pop up. 

In what reports described as efforts made by online activists to protest Trump in the virtual space, the first page of search results were tweaked to show his face when the word ‘idiot’ is searched.

However, the results appeared such partly because the Green Day song American Idiot was used by protesters to soundtrack his trip to London last week. 

However, reports have noted that since then, activists are making a concerted effort to capitalize on that association, and manipulate Google’s algorithm by linking the word to the picture. 

The effort bore results, reportedly after people upvoted a post containing a photo of the U.S. President and the word “idiot” on Reddit.

In all the hype that the search results have generated over the last 24 hours, what emerged as a noteworthy response from the company was its refusal to play God when it comes to its algorithm. 

In 2004, when the search term “Jew” started returning a hook-nosed caricature, rather than delete the image, Google instead took out ads next to it to explain why antisemitic imagery, as well as antisemitic websites like “Jew Watch,” were appearing so high up the results.

At the time, Google explained, “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. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted.”
Then in 2009, Google maintained that line of argument when searches for “Michelle Obama” began returning a picture of the first lady’s face retouched to have ape-like features. 

The company then too decided to raise awareness alongside it rather than make changes to its algorithm.

In 2016, searching for the word “rapist” was likely to bring up at least five images of Bill Clinton in the top 10.