Shortly after Kamala Harris released her policy agenda on Sunday evening, users on X spotted something in the metadata: Much of the language appears to have been lifted from Joe Biden’s campaign website.
On Sunday night, X user Corinne Green pointed out that the issues section of Harris’s website contained metadata with language urging voters to reelect Joe Biden. This language was visible when links to the campaign site were shared, and in the website’s description on Google searches.
All of this creates the impression that at least some of the Harris campaign’s policy language was copied and pasted from Biden’s documents. That would be an embarrassing miscue from the Harris campaign, which partly came into being because of a perception that a refresh was needed to garner enthusiasm in the Democratic Party.
It doesn’t help that the section on her website about her Israel-Palestine policy seems very similar to what Biden’s campaign was saying.
Embarrassing for sure. On my website it’s common for me to start a new page in Jekyll by copying an existing one so that the whole boilerplate, layout, and theming are correct, and I can just focus on filling in the substance. I bet with WordPress or whatever all those metadata fields are more difficult to notice. Regardless ,still shoulda previewed the metadata/opengraph cards.