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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: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:28PM
The real message is that you shouldn't make up your mind based on what an anonymous collection of other people think. Anonymous people can present arguments, but YOU should decide whether those arguments are valid. Argument from authority is invalid, but it's good as gold compared to argument from an anonymous group of people, much less argument from an internet poll.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.