Fake polls are a real problem

While it is hard to guess considering the ease of creating polls nowadays, as demonstrated in the article, I am unwilling to believe that the motive was actually greed and not just simple "trolling".

If Delphi Analytica was created "to move the betting markets", wouldn't this be quite a bit of risk for not enough payoff?

Of course this reasoning falls apart if you see it as a proof of concept, so my instincts might not be worth much in this case.

As an aside, I find this quite troubling (though it might be bias, because this sounds like something I have felt for quite some time without researching it):

"As Steve Berman, a writer at the conservative website The Resurgent who wrote a skeptical take on the poll, told me, 'Anyone in the entire political blogosphere is maybe 1 or 2 degrees of separation from anyone else. The trust network is fairly strong.' In other words, once a story appears in one place, it’s likely to appear in many others because people believe a reputable website wouldn’t get fooled by a fake poll."