Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Homa Khaleeli

How Vote Leave got rickrolled

Rickrolling ... never gets old.
Rickrolling ... never gets old. Photograph: Peter Carrette Archive/Getty Images

Despite its name, there is one thing the Vote Leave campaign should not have left for so long: registering a domain name. The delay by the anti-EU organisation meant that up to 100,000 people who tried to access voteleave.com, co.uk or .net were rickrolled – redirected to a YouTube clip of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. So far, so internet. But this time, the rickrolling is political. Mario Van Poppel, who snapped up the domain name, is a pro-EU campaigner. He says he will only hand it back if he gets 10 minutes with Boris Johnson and a donation made to a charity of his choice.

Carly Fiorina, a former Republican presidential candidate, might sympathise. Despite also being the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she wasn’t tech-savvy enough to avoid a similar mistake. According to news reports, potential supporters who clicked on carlyfiorina.org saw a message reading: “Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain. So, I’m using it to tell you how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard. It was this many ...” Following the message were approximately 30,000 frowny emoticons. The post referred to a merger Fiorina had overseen as CEO of HP, which led to redundancies. The site is now a holding page.

In fact, this has been a running theme of the 2016 presidential campaign. Tedcruz.com was snapped up by a presumed Democrat – click on the page and you are confronted with the simple but effective statements “Support President Obama” and “Immigration Reform Now!” Meanwhile, tedcruz2016.com now links to an embarrassing YouTube video of him.

Jeb Bush registered jebbush.com in time – then forgot to renew it. Donald Trump’s savvy campaigners stepped in and started redirecting it to Trump’s site. Today, it hosts a list of 10 links for ads. JebBushforPresident.com, meanwhile, was reportedly snapped up by a gay couple who wanted to promote discussions on LGBT rights.

In the UK, things are no better. The Guardian, for instance, missed out on guardian.com – beaten to it by a glass company. If you search for “David Cameron website”, the first listing is for the official Conservative party site, but the second is DavidCameron.com, run by Reza Sobati. Sobati’s site, which he describes as “Christian left”, has posts on unemployment, corruption and abortion – and he says his next move is to have tax-planning ads on the site as part of his “tongue in cheek” blog. The only upside for the PM? GeorgeOsborne.com, EdMiliband.com, GordonBrown.com and even VladimirPutin.com are all owned by Sobati. Labour’s current leader needs to move fast – JeremyCorbyn.co.uk is already hosting a page about a “video slot machine game”, but JeremyCorbyn.com is still up for grabs. For the moment.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.