Revised ICE Press Release Alterations Revitalize Antiquated Sculptures, Making Them Appear Fresh to Google's Eyes
cruising the web for ICE activities or raids yields an overwhelming array of results. It's undeniable that ICE has been quite active since Trump took office, but a simple Google search might lead you to believe that ICE conducted over 300 busts on January 24, 2025, just four days after Trump's inauguration. But digging deeper often reveals a different story. For example, if you search for ICE events in Texas, Google might point you to a 2019 news article under the title "ICE executes federal criminal search warrant in North Texas." If you explore further, you'll find that South Carolina is also reported to receive assistance from ICE, but that story is actually from 2011. The same phenomenon can be observed throughout the United States.
Looking closer, we see that these old news reports have been pushed to the top of the search results, becoming intertwined with real-time information about ICE raids and operations. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that these reports from past administrations contain a small update on January 24, 2025, accompanied by an archival banner. The edits to the HTML code on these pages made ICE's press releases appear as if they had been recently updated, which led to their prominence in Google's search results.
However, a closer examination of the HTML code shows that these edits were not exclusive to recent ICE press releases regarding arrests. Old stories on COVID-19 protections, I-9 policies, and other topics were also manipulated in the same manner. The pattern was consistent across all ICE press releases, regardless of their content.
Comparing ICE's handling of old press releases with other government agencies, we found that old stories from the Department of Defense and Department of Agriculture had not been updated at all. Releases from the Department of Labor had archival banners indicating that they might contain outdated information, but they did not include updated timestamps.
Our search on www.ice.gov for "Updated: 01/24/2025" yielded over 300 results, many of which were decades old. These results were often mixed with more recent articles about current ICE operations or raids. In some cases, these old stories surfaced at the top of the search results. The combination of current and outdated information, with no clear context, contributes to the confusion and fragmentation of the information space that we're all experiencing.
When contacted for comment, a Google spokesperson explained that the company's systems are not designed to promote pages based solely on timestamps. However, there's no denying that the manipulated timestamps have made old ICE news articles more prominent in the search results.
Sources:1. The Guardian2. Google spokesperson3. Cross-checked with Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Department of the Interior, and Veteran's Affairs websites.
In the world of tech and the future of information, this manipulation of HTML code in old ICE press releases raises questions about the reliability of technology in preserving and presenting historical data accurately. In fact, such technologies could potentially shape the narrative of events in the tech-driven realm of search engine results.
