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You may be getting trolled right now without even knowing it.
Donald Trump supporters artificially manipulated the results of online polls to create a false narrative that the Republican nominee won the first presidential debate on Monday night.
The efforts originated from users of the pro-Trump Reddit community r/The_Donald and 4chan messaged boards, which bombarded around 70 polls, including those launched by Time, Fortune, and CNBC.
In this latest incarnation, multiple Reddit users enlisted the Trump-supporting masses on r/The_Donald, which has over 200,000 subscribers, by posting dozens of online polls that are vulnerable to vote brigading, bots, and other forms of manipulation that make these non-scientific surveys notoriously unreliable.
Polls that were not open to public voting consistently put Clinton ahead of Trump. In a flash poll by Public Policy Polling, Clinton led Trump 51 to 40. A CNN/ORC poll conducted immediately following the debate found significantly stronger support for Clinton, who topped Trump 62 to 27.
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-polls-4chan-the-donald/
(Score: 4, Touché) by Sulla on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:25AM
Thank you for Correcting the Record.
Pretty sure both sides were doing this. Some of the polls had a couple million votes, enough that /pol/ and reddit wouldn't have made too huge of a dip even if all of them voted for Trump.
Boohoo we didn't hit the polls hard enough and 90% showed a Trump win, it must be the Trolls! Hackers! Russian trolls and hackers!
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:30AM
Who the fuck takes online polls seriously? Even many normal polls are unscientific, and online ones are even worse.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:27AM
> Who the fuck takes online polls seriously?
Trump and his campaign. They've been talking about those polls non-stop. Maybe it wasn't 4chan brigading them, but a bangladeshi click-farm hired by Trump. He has a history of hiring actors to make his events look big league. [hollywoodreporter.com] Fake it till you make it...
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:39AM
Can we ask this to our readers?
( ) I do
( ) I don't because I'm a conspiracy theorist
( ) I don't because usually I don't like the outcome
( ) I do and posted some reasons below
See? Totally unbiased and unmanipulative
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:00AM
If everyone votes for Trump, you should too!
After all, you wouldn't want to be a DEVIANT, would you?!?
Authoritarian followers are conformists.
And there are a lot of authoritarian followers.
So that's why online polls are important: many people want to vote just like "everybody else", where the "everybody else" is subject to interpretation and manipulation.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:55PM
If you don't vote Trump you must be a Muslim sympathizer...
Trump and his new brand of McCarthyism.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 3, Informative) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:35AM
That's the Trump narrative: Everyone is just as bad, so by comparison I'm no worse!
What amazes me is that the morons over at 4chan still haven't figured out that if you discuss your plans to screw with polls in public other people will notice. It's GamerGate all over again, they discussed their harassment and false flag ops and sock puppet accounts in a public IRC forum where one of their victims was able to simply log and publish it all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @10:25AM
Or could it be that the "other side" are doing it to smear "4chan", and be able to play the victims?
Case in point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @10:22AM
Or maybe someone is trying to make it look like someone is trying to make 4chan look bad. Maybe it's a false false flag.