And here I was thinking this was proved beyond any reasonable doubt when 4chan users spoofed the Time Magazine person of the year poll of 2009 to spell out "MARBLECAKE, ALSO THE GAME" by the initials of the top winners:
This is evidence, but it would be a mistake to think that high profile online contests would have the same dynamics as low profile online polling. 4chan is characterized by an insane level of effort on the specific jokes that they care about. But they don't care about a random poll nearly as much as they care about big stunts like this.
aniviacat 1 hours ago [-]
Online polls being easy to manipulate makes it so weird to me that the European Central Bank made an online poll on what the new Euro bank note design should be. (Participants did not have to identify themselves in any way.) I wonder if the results will at all be taken into consideration in the following decision-making process.
Or Boaty McBoatface winning the name of a research ship (given to a submarine on the ship).
dcminter 19 minutes ago [-]
In fairness I think a lot of people (me included) genuinely thought that would be an entertaining name for the ship, so the polling result wasn't necessarily wrong per se.
Ellis_dev 9 minutes ago [-]
The lure of a few bucks for minimal effort always attracts fraud. Our own survey data is consistently tainted by bots and click-farmers.
noduerme 3 hours ago [-]
The bit about 10% of respondents claiming they had visited the International Space Station was funny. Reminded me of this nugget[0], which for people unfamiliar with the subject doesn't mean that 20% of Jews believe in Jesus... it means that 20% of the respondents to the poll were either deranged or confused, and self-identity as Jewish for no clear reason. It's analogous to "1 in 5 vegans say they eat meat."
Having dealt with this before we always put trap questions in polls. Filtered 3-7% of respondents.
antonvs 2 hours ago [-]
Something like 290 people have visited the ISS. If they all answered the survey and if the survey size was around 2900, then the 10% figure would be correct.
rsktaker 1 hours ago [-]
How about just not doing online opt-in polls
Nobody enjoys that experience; I personally am a "bogus" respondent.
tokioyoyo 4 hours ago [-]
From time to time we've battled multiple ideas around polling and tech within my friend circles, because there really isn't "reliable" way of knowing "what people want" when it comes to government's decision makings. It's such a hard "reach and incentives" problem, that asking for an opinion, might change the opinion itself as well, depended on the questioning. That being said, it would be cool to see real opinions of people on general matters, rather than heavily sampled versions of it.
parineum 6 hours ago [-]
The easy fix is to not do online polling.
hennell 5 hours ago [-]
You need to though. If you only do phone call polls you're only going to poll people with (landline?) phones who answer (random?) calls and have the time/enthusiasm to respond when you call. That heavily skews demographics.
A lot of people will only do online polling, and it's by far the easiest way to cover a lot of demographics (need to supplement with other methods as well if you don't want a poll of "internet users" - but that is a far larger and varied group than most other methods would produce)
LateCheckOut 5 hours ago [-]
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dyauspitr 4 hours ago [-]
Polls seem completely useless over the past decade or so. I think betting markets are a better indicator of true sentiment now.
tancop 2 hours ago [-]
Betting markets are even less representative. People who trade on politics are usually rich conservative men with a risk taking mindset and more likely to be active crypto users or work in finance. It's a totally different user base from normal polls.
5 hours ago [-]
jodapogo 2 hours ago [-]
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darig 6 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 11:02:23 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/time-magazine-throws-up-it...
Or when Kim Jong Un won in 2012, spelling out "KJUGASCHAMBER":
https://observer.com/2012/12/4chan-successfully-votes-kim-jo...
This is evidence, but it would be a mistake to think that high profile online contests would have the same dynamics as low profile online polling. 4chan is characterized by an insane level of effort on the specific jokes that they care about. But they don't care about a random poll nearly as much as they care about big stunts like this.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr2609...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-for-jesus-poll-15-of-jewi...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
Nobody enjoys that experience; I personally am a "bogus" respondent.
A lot of people will only do online polling, and it's by far the easiest way to cover a lot of demographics (need to supplement with other methods as well if you don't want a poll of "internet users" - but that is a far larger and varied group than most other methods would produce)