US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations
24 comments
·February 7, 2025Arnavion
I don't know (or care about) whether there's any gaming in this specific case, but note that the dates that Google assigns to search results aren't reliable in the first place. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40547453
microtherion
Recently, the Trump administration took credit for using threats of tariffs to badger Canada into announcing a $1.3B border reinforcement plan.
One problem with that claim is that this plan was already announced in December: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/12/g...
readthenotes1
Did a check on “ice arrests Idaho” and got different results in DDG and Google -- almost all of them pointed to a copy of this article.
Fixed, or perhaps never happened. Hard to know these days
master_crab
If Trump were a tech bro, gaming SEO is what he would do.
Maybe this is what all those nifty DOGE engineers are doing.
pacomerh
you mean nifty racist engineers like the one who just quit
davidw
When they're not doing white supremacy https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-po...
aishsbcic
Trumps currently on track to deport less than Biden. ICE is underfunded and he realistically can’t get any new funding for at least a few months. Much like his first time around, he’s hoping deterrence etc will at least stop the inflow.
Maybe this changes, but I doubt it. Trumps not really an “America first” candidate - that’s just a ruse to get elected. He is on track to deport millions of Palestinians however.
Waterluvian
It feels positively bizarre to read this comment and then read the final sentence. I’m simply befuddled at how to even formulate a response.
I’m not sure what’s actually true yet. But that feels argumentatively inconsistent.
Do they have a budget to deport millions of people or not?
stetrain
Pretty sure that (presumably) military action in a foreign country comes out of a different budget than domestic immigration enforcement.
null
AdieuToLogic
> It feels positively bizarre to read this comment and then read the final sentence.
Sometimes ChatGPT hallucinates like a college student who just discovered mushrooms. Or maybe it's a human who did same.
Either way, there is a high probability hallucinogenics are involved.
astrange
You don't need a budget to cancel visas as long as the people leave on their own.
You do need a budget to invade Gaza.
thatguy0900
The enemy is always both very strong and very weak, depending on what kind of story you're telling
like_any_other
So all the anti-deportation/anti-border activists can relax, because it's not happening?
stetrain
I’m not sure that a president two weeks into his term not yet achieving all of the things he has promised he will do is reason to relax about those promises.
ImJamal
It is happening, but at lower rates than Biden.
like_any_other
So why increase protests when this administration is, allegedly, friendlier to immigrants?
krapp
They aren't friendlier to immigrants, they just aren't yet as capable of being as hostile to immigrants as Trump wants them to be.
rayiner
BBC says 10 million illegal immigrants came in under Biden: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jp4xqx2z3o
How do you get lower rates under Trump? Are you saying Biden was deporting 2 million+ people a year to offset that?
null
At least part is probably due to the main news stories that were happening on 1/24/2025. That was the day that ICE started their "Nationwide Deportation Operation" on immigrants and it was the same day that a judge blocked the order for ending "Birthright Citizenship." Here's the summaries from Democracy Now and NYTimes.
Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/24/headlines
NyTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/issue/todayspaper/2025/01/24/todays-...
Whether it was the SEO folks changing stories to jump to the top of results based on the news, or whether it was the administration trying to get PR support for the activity, it was likely a response.
At least from a personal perspective, there's a chance that it's not especially "nefarious" on the part of the administration, and that it's mostly SEO folks just changing content to try to manipulate search results and jump themselves back into relevance.