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Comment by 0points | Hacker News Reader

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:

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...

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You're half right, half not.

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.

Of course, but a low profile poll also needs less effort to manipulate, so it scales down for both ends.

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.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr2609...

In that case there was heavy pre-selection und strict rules for submissions even before that. So they were probably fine with any of the presented choices winning and the "poll" is really just PR.

Or Boaty McBoatface winning the name of a research ship (given to a submarine on the ship).

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.

Fair, though it does show how things like that can skew polling results.

i.e. engagement bait

At the time, we ended up with a conference room with the same name, after an office vote.

Those were not bogus respondents, just silly ones.

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