The first page of search results has become the frontline in an Internet protest against President Donald Trump — with pictures of him popping up first when a user Googles images for the word "idiot."
According to the U.K.-based The Guardian, part of the reason for the algorithm manipulation was because the Green Day song "American Idiot" was used by protesters as a soundtrack for Trump's visit to London last week.
Since then, a campaign to capitalize on the association picked up steam, mostly involving Reddit users upvoting a post containing a photo of Trump and the word "idiot," The Guardian reported.
The Hill reported Google images search results are gathered and presented in order of relevance, so high-popularity posts on Reddit, one of the internet's most popular sites, often bubble to the top of Google searches.
Google has always refused to interfere in either offensive or controversial search results, taking ads out next to the imagery to explain why they are appearing so high up in the results, The Guardian reported.
"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 company explained in 2004 about an anti-Semitic algorithm manipulation. "Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted."
In the past, Reddit users have manipulated search results for other causes, like associating CNN's logo with "fake news," or a Nazi swastika with Comcast during the battle over net neutrality, The Hill reported.
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