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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the stuffing-the-ballot-box dept.

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/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:48AM (#407197)

    > I find it weird they aren't blaming the Russians for this.

    Maybe you should research why "they" (aka the NSA and the FBI) have been blaming the Russians.

    The russian motive isn't necessarily to get trump elected, it is to destroy faith in the us electoral system because (a) putin blames the US for ukraine kicking his puppet president out and (b) so he can tu quoque the US when it complains about how totally rigged russian elections are. Fucking with some random online poll accomplishes neither of those goals. Dumbasses like you believing the FBI is making up excuses for clinton when comey clearly does not like her does help accomplish those goals.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:16PM (#407362)

    What faith? You think voters have faith in this POS system? No there is no faith, only a mix of desperation and apathy at this point, and Russia had NOTHING to do with that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:02PM (#407420)

      > You think voters have faith in this POS system?

      Yes. At least 40% of the population. [wikipedia.org]

      Just because you are a fool doesn't make everyone else a fool.