Watching Times of Malta’s polls has become a spectator sport
Published:
December 4, 2014 at 11:57pm
Up until this afternoon, the poll result was 77% No. Amazingly, in just a few hours that result has been inverted.
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Such idiots. If you’re going to use a bot use an algorithm to simulate credible voting.
Power stations cause big swings.
I thought I was going to vote in this poll, but found one about Fantasy tours.
Daphne, you spoke too early.
The switchers strike again
A government of swingers.
Force of habit. On Maltastar the choices for polls are always “very happy”, “happy” or “not sure”. Persons choosing “not sure” are taken in for “positivity training”.
It caught my eye straight away. They found a way to hack the system. And many are foolish enough to be taken in.
Ok, so this is just plain obvious now. Shouldn’t someone investigate this? Can’t the times just check where the surge in votes is coming from? How is it possible for that to happen naturally? It can’t.
I was keeping an eye on that poll.
The votes shot to 23389 in the space of a few hours because I had checked it around noon and when I checked again at around 4 pm the poll had been changed.
Clearly someone’s found a way to hack their polls.
Now we need some genius to exchange the ‘yes’ and ‘no’, that would be fun.
JIen I-polls darba minnhom iccekjajthom fl-1am, aghmilt refresh u telghu b’6 voti f’temp ta’ 1 second…jista’ jkun.
Ergajt aghmilt refrech u telghu b’10 t’elef wara sekonda.
F’zewg sekondi fis-siegha ta’ filoghdu telghu b’ 10,006 votes.
Dan li qed nghidlek hu fuq il-polls ta’ qabel din.
It caught my eye straight away. They found a way to hack the system. And many are foolish enough to be taken in.
What do you call ‘insider dealing’ for polls and surveys?
A good number of Muscat’s Twitter followers look like false profiles to me.
How long has this been going on?
I have a feeling it has been going on since before the elections to generate a positive feeling among undecided voters to vote Labour.
Quite a while. I have observed this occurring various times in previous polls with the poll being removed soon after the extra surge in votes and inversion of results occur.
What I find irritating is that these polls’ false results are sometimes quoted in Times Talk. So don’t be surprised if Times Talk discusses the power station and this poll result is quoted and taken as a true result. That’s why I suspect that the Times people themselves are behind this.
Fodder for a great headline: Shocking electricity statistics
U le……what amateurs, jahasra.
If not a cover up, it has to be manipulation.
Dawk qeghdin jaghmlu hekk biex itellfu l-credibilta tas-surveys tat-Times. Allura jigu irrilevanti u ma jibda jaghti kashom hadd.
Anke l-Oppozizjoni ma tkunx tista tirreferi ghalihom.
Times of Malta itself has become a joke.
[Daphne – I don’t think that’s entirely fair. A couple of journalists there are doing an excellent job and the leading articles are generally quite strong.]
I agree with Daphne…it’s an outside hacking job.
I don’t believe the two reporters who quote the polls in their TV programme are so unprofessional.They seem to me very good at their job.
The elves in Beijing are very busy.
Well, government speakers all play down the significance of internet polls like those of Times of Malta but, obviously, they do attach importance to them. Why else would they bother tampering with the results?
Does Muscat’s Government share the same tools to manipulate online polls? Look at this story – http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/14/gchq-tools-manipulate-online-information-leak
They cannot even f**k things up properly.
Times of Malta should try a new poll:
What is left when you subtract Eur20 million from Eur5.5 billion?
So what if they think they’re doing fine?
I think it’s nothing more complex then a bunch of ‘lil elves’ clicking away earnestly at PL headquarters.
Or perhaps that’s why they employed so many with the civil service – might as well put them to good use!
It’s easy to vote again, just vote, see the result, press F5 tp refresh the page, and vote again!
Can’t you see them doing it zealously in some office?
I can see Cyrus Engerer & Co dutifully occupied in Brussels.
I think it’s actually quite easy to write a computer program to do the voting for you….no need for repeated manic pressing of buttons
Hi Daphne
No need to publish this comment.
I have noticed that you literally take a photo with your camera to take a snapshot of the screen.
You can choose to press ‘printscreen’ on your pc (or use the printscreen function from your mac) and paste it on powerpoint/paint to save it as an image.
Regards
[Daphne – No, those are things I receive. I work on the internet, remember? I know how to take a screenshot even though I’m a woman and over 40. But thanks.]
Didn’t want to infer that at all.
I apologise for assuming it was you who took the shots.
[Daphne – That’s all right. I’m not offended at all. I just think it’s amusing.]
It seems like it’s no rocket science to hack an online poll. Muscat has got his elves busy at work again obviously. A simple Google search shows the following method …
> Open Chrome
> Options Tab
> Click on “Settings”
> Scroll down click on “Advanced Settings”.
> Open “Content Settings”
> Disable cookies by selecting “Block sites from setting any data”
> Click on “Done”
Open the poll page and vote. Each vote will be counted. Tried and tested, it works.
That poll has now been removed
It happened also with the previous poll asking whether one agrees with Simon Busuttil that Manwel Mallia should go.
I challenge Times of Malta to release their analytics around the type and source of hits on their site and votes on their polls. What would they be hiding?
Does Times of Malta ever ask questions?
”Malta International Airport has heightened its security procedures in line with international protocol following global reports of increased threats to airports.”
Why are no other airports speaking about this now, are the global reports of increased threats recent or did MIA put out this statement out now when other airports were on heightened alert at least since last July?
The lack of information in that article is astounding.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141205/local/heightened-security-at-airport.546985
There was another poll this morning that was already going haywire. Times of Malta appears to have pulled it.
There are two possible explanations.
The first is external manipulation by our friendly elves using bots/different VPNs/blocking and/or deleting cookies, allowing for manipulation of the polls with just a few hundred clicks per ‘elve’.
A second and more sinister option would be internal manipulation by TOM themselves, but I doubt that they would stoop to that level. The fact that they pulled the poll probably shows that this was not the case.
Either way, this would be a very Chinese way of dealing with public opinion. If they cannot censor the internet, they will at very least try to twist things to skew public perception their way.
It’s a good think we do not have electronic voting as yet.
There have been enough ‘mistakes’ in vote-counting after the
March 2013 election. (Remember the Courts are still grappling with them in order to arrive at the correct outcome).
Just imagine what can be possible were we to adopt the, admittedly quicker, electronic system.
If they are tampering with the Times of Malta polls than I shudder to think what will happen in the general elections.
If Times of Malta want to be taken seriously they should protect their polls against voting by bots. Like having the voter recognise and key in random letters and numbers shown as scribbles.
Note that Times of Malta has now completely removed the polls section.