The English Disco Lovers (EDL) was a Web movement, formed as a
Google bombing campaign with the intention of replacing the far-right group The
English Defence League
The English Defence League (EDL) is a far-right, Islamophobic organisation in the United Kingdom. A social movement and pressure group that employs street demonstrations as its main tactic, the EDL presents itself as a single-issue movement ...
as the top search engine result for "EDL".
The website has since been taken down.
History
The English Disco Lovers was formed on 18 September 2012
by four anonymous London-based friends, who were discussing the appropriation of the initials EDL from the English Defence League and "putting it to better use". Some time after that they wrote a manifesto expressing their aim to oust the existing EDL from the top of Google's and Facebook's search results, aiming to achieve this via
search engine optimisation
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than direc ...
using a website, Twitter feed, and Facebook page.
In an emailed comment to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', they said:
References
External links
*
English Disco Lovers Facebook pageEnglish Disco Lovers Twitter account
Internet memes introduced in 2012
Culture jamming
Internet-based activism
Anti-racism in the United Kingdom
Disco
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