Edward Snowden nominated for TIME's person of the year | Hacker News Reader

Edward Snowden nominated for TIME's person of the year

poy.time.com

86 pointsszimpl41 comments

Miley Cyrus is currently winning, and probably will win. This isn't the NSA hacking Time or any other conspiracy. Miley Cyrus is more popular than Edward Snowden, and more people are likely to want Miley Cyrus to win than Edward Snowden.

This entire poll is, like any poll, a popularity contest. If you think Edward Snowden is more popular than Miley Cyrus, then you're far too isolated and need to leave the tech bubble to talk to some humans.

I was about to vote for Snowden, but the irony of having to "connect with facebook" put me off.

I don't understand how this works. Snowden shows 37k votes and Cyrus 21k votes?!

They're mostly downvotes.

The stats I see are:

    Cyrus:
      Yes:  4.7k
      No:  16.5k

    Snowden:
      Yes: 35.5k
      No:   2.3k

This poll does seem to support the claim that Edward Snowden is more popular than Miley Cyrus.

This seems to contradict earlier reports in this thread, so there's probably a lot of volatility due to Time removing what they see as fraud. I stand by my original prediction[0], however.

[0] http://predictionbook.com/predictions/22251 (I feel 80% certain but am correcting this to 70% for obvious reasons)

I would hope the readership of TIME is still infinitely more interested in what Snowden does than what Miley Cyrus does.

The Time poll for person of the year is notorious for being rigged. In 2009, 4chan got moot to the top, in addition spelling out "marblecake also the game" with the first initials of the 21 top nominees. [1]

In 2012, something similar was done [2].

2013? Yup. http://www.dailydot.com/news/time-person-of-the-year-miley-c...

Anyway, my point is that the Time poll isn't even a reflection of popularity.

The 2013 article also covers these 2 topics.

1. http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-lose...

2. http://www.dailydot.com/society/hackers-time-person-year-kju...

It's worth noting that the TIME person of the year and the 'winner' of this poll are not necessarily the same. The TIME editors will choose whoever they like.

Very true. Especially since m00t from 4chan won and they hacked the whole polling system before.

TIME magazine jumped the shark a very long time ago. I remember a time when everyone was curious who would win and it was a really big honor. Today you're sharing the honor with the likes of Moot from 4Chan. I think I am going to go off and vote for Miley Cyrus.

The person they editors pick != the person that wins a silly internet poll.

Well, it's supposedly the most influential person, and not necessarily an honor -- it's not the Nobel Peace prize.

Hitler was it in 1938. Surprisingly Giuliani was chosen over OBL in 2001. Then we have Khomeini in 1979. Stalin won twice.

I think Snowden fits perfectly here and not it's not necessarily an honor.

I can't think of a lamer (from a non-US view) controversy than the twerking, it's right up there with "maldrobe malfunction".

Not that this poll really matters as it is not really who gets it. That is picked by the staff/editor. But historically, the Time POY is not always a "good" person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year

So what ever you feel about Snowden (or Cyrus) really doesn't mean they couldn't win. Hitler won for fuck's sake.

Previous Hacker News discussion with several comments (I'm not sure what the duplicate detector missed here):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800145

The other one has a trailing "/" in the URL so clearly the dupe detector is fairly [dumb|simple|easily defeated].

Everyone here is well aware that TIME's editors choose the person of the year, and that the poll is a mere sideshow which at most might influence the editors' choice, right?

Cf. moot and /b/'s votespamming.

According to the following page Miley Cyrus has 25% of the vote...WTF?

http://poy.time.com/2013/11/25/vote-now-who-should-be-times-...

The numbers are being modified. In the other thread, someone posted a screenshot of the then-current results for snowden: http://i.imgur.com/jv9t4X0.png

Yes, I saw ~200,000 votes for Snowden when I voted earlier today, and now it's just 37,000. What's going on?! Is Time changing the numbers, or is NSA that petty and hacked them?

Maybe they detected fraud

This is really fishy.

That could be expected, but the relatively high numbers for Modi and Putin make zero sense from any angle.

Is TIME Person of the Year a festival of trolling now? There are some people on that list that have done some seemingly bad things.

TIME Person of the year was never meant to be the best person, but instead the most influential person.

They picked Hitler in 1938.

Hitler was Time's man of the year at one point; they don't limit it to people who are altruistic.

actually i heard he was rejected for man of the century/millenium for precisely this reason.

without a question he has had the largest impact on modern history of a single individual from the past 100 years.

To be fair, the competition would have to include Henry Ford and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

These are good examples, Henry Ford is an especially good example, as the pioneer of much of what we consider to be common sense or standard working practices today.

I'd disagree on Oppenheimer though - other than his media popularity for the famous comment on the atom bomb and the trial, his contributions to physics, whilst considerable, are easily trumped by his contemporaries in that field. Dirac, Feynmann, Einstein, Pauli, Fermi to name a few...

Its an interesting topic for discussion to be fair. Probably worth more thought than I give it credit...

This is always an interesting question; I definitely do not think though, that the answer is "without a question".

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/fritzh... ber/

you are right, it is a naive high level view and a deeper analysis is probably warranted... but i think its a pretty defensible position once you start looking at details, and especially if you are willing to lay the entire of WW2 at his doorstep... certainly in terms of human life lost and impact to industry and economy, its hard to think of a 'single event' from the past 100 years that even comes close.

For sure, I agree.

Oh good. A poll designed to draw publicity to what's already a brazen publicity stunt.

The poll software is totally broken. Not that Snowden had 300k votes some hours ago. But right now if you open up the single pages of Cyrus (21,338 votes) and Snowden (37,756 votes) the total does not check out at all.

Interesting, rigged to let Miley win?

http://www.dailydot.com/news/time-person-of-the-year-miley-c...

In the faceoff section, we see: Obama (2%) vs Snowden (98%).

ugh.

i applaud his bravery but its utterly misguided, as is all of the hype around this.

whilst i'm sure the specifics are very helpful i still wonder "well what did you think the NSA and GCHQ were doing if not /their jobs that we pay them to do/"

the naivete of the web elite is constantly disappointing.

edit: tempted to delete because it is yet another rage response to this situation, but curious to see how it goes.

Go Miley GO!

That Miley is in the lead is sad commentary indeed.

That Snowden is a known figure is even sadder.

Miley Cyrus, the epitome of American greatness.

I hope someone makes a bot that skews anyone's votes but Miley's to stop her from winning.

Ahg.

No vote from me.

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