Time POY: Snowden's 200,000+ votes go missing, now behind Miley Cyrus | Hacker News Reader

Time POY: Snowden's 200,000+ votes go missing, now behind Miley Cyrus

poy.time.com

153 pointsbeaker5271 comments

It's hard to overstate how unimportant this is.

A non-binding online poll to help pick who will be on the cover of a dying news magazine. Notable recent winners include Vladimir Putin and, uh, "you" as well as "A Protestor".

| Notable previous winners include Vladimir Putin and, uh, "you" and "A Protestor".

Don't forget Hitler!

And Stalin, twice.

And G.Bush Jr, twice.

And Obama, twice.

(In fact, you'd be pressed to fill more than one hand counting the pleasant people on the list)

They claim it's the "most influential person, for better or worse", but don't admit that's as long as the person did not really upset the status quo.

The idea that Snowden might be Time POY is laughable. The "trolls" know this, which is why they make a mockery of the poll each year.

Obamba...isn't he that guy that won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes, and few can really explain why...

He started less wars than average US president :)

Actually I think there's a chance they do pick Snowden, but I don't care because it's really of very little consequence. I'm sure Time cares much more about selling magazines than maintaining the political status quo.

The audience of the (dying) magazine industry doesn't come close to the audience of snowden's message. your comment kind of proves that snowden doesn't have a chance, because choosing him won't increase sales.

I think there's actually a very good chance. These are journalists doing the picking after all although their selection will likely have pretty much zero to do with the results of an Internet poll. (The chances of it being Miley Cyrus on the other hand are about as close to zero as you can get.)

Remember how he wanted the story not to be about him?

Stalin and Hitler didn't upset the status quo?

Since then they've shied away from selecting "controversial" figures. Hence why bin Laden didn't get it in 2001, for example.

The poll really just mocks itself.

Hitler probably impacted the world more than all of the above combined.

Depends on what you mean by "impact", as Stalin and Mao were both responsible for more famine, torture, and death than even Hitler. On the other hand Hitler's "impact" was probably more relevant to Time's audience (in the USA and Great Britain).

Don't forget, Awesome Award based on internet votes will be spammed all over Wikipedia, providing free advertising that points to Time Magazine, and wikipedia editors believe any award is some authoritative measure of success.

In a way, hacker news could make up an award based on internet votes and vote Miley Cyrus as the Greatest Creative Mind of the last 100 years. Wikipedia editors will be all over that.

Unimportant, but revealing.

This is the dumbest way to present a poll I have ever seen! There are 44 choices but you can either vote for "Miley Cyrus vs Jimmy Fallon" or click next 34 times and vote for Edward Snowden.

I'll give you a hint since the servers seem to be overloaded and right now I can't even vote for Snowden:

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

where persons-name is the name of the person you wanted to vote for. You need to prove your identity with Twitter or Facebook. I have no idea if this is new or if it's how the poll has always been run, but the voting is open 'til Dec 4.

I'm afraid if I direct link, they're just going to see it as a voting ring and disqualify all of your votes. If you can even get the page to load. I am currently still waiting.

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

Not only prove your identity, but also fork over your friends list. http://i.imgur.com/ATUOa9T.png

PSA everyone: TIME Magazine's POY online technology has always been a POS, and TIME Magazine, not doing quite so well in the financials as the years go on, has likely done little to correct that.

From last year: How 4Chan Made Kim Jong Un Time Readers' Person of the Year http://gizmodo.com/5968230/how-4chan-made-kim-jong-un-time-r...

Time for a overused saying: Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence.

That saying leaves out one important piece of information from an ealier saying that it was influenced by:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but __don't rule out malice__"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Similar_quotatio...

Time is the same poll that was hacked to allow Moot to win, and for the names of the top of the list to read MARBLE CAKE ALSO THE GAME.

Fixing the places of the top 21 people seems like an exploitable poll. I don't know how much has improved since then.

It wasn't hacked, just gamed.

Depends on the meaning of the work hack. A clever prank? I think it counts.

You can't see the difference between ballot stuffing and vote rigging?

Ballot stuffing can be done by anyone with motivation.

Vote Rigging (e.g. - deleting votes) can only be done by the people running the system.

You can't see the difference between vote rigging and fixing gamed votes?

This is hilarious. I voted yesterday and Snowden had 99% of the vote. He deserves to win.

Someone should conduct a real, independent poll an award a POY award from the Internets.

This is about as clear a sign that Time magazine has become irrelevant as you could ever wish for.

It's a clear sign that Internet polls are as irrelevant as you could ever wish for.

I love how people who don't have Facebook are excluded from voting. Not that I care, but there's no way Edward Snowden should suffer the indignity of appearing in the same list as Miley Cyrus for anything... and to especially lose to her?

It's almost worth creating a Facebook account just to bring justice to this... and then deleting it.

This is exactly my process for using Facebook.

Good luck deleting it.

I know :-/ It's ridiculous, sigh.

Once you delete your account and leave it alone for 90 days, its gone. It will never be linked to you again. Thanks, Irish Data Protection Commissioner!

Pretty clear it's being hacked, especially when their site's been completely buggy for me every time I've tried to vote.

- Yesterday AM you could auth in with Twitter or Facebook and vote without posting.

- Yesterday PM Twitter was no longer an option.

- Today AM Twitter is an option but not for auth, now it opens up an "intent" page with a pre-filled tweet.

My guess is that a) it didn't go viral enough without forcing a tweet, b) Twitter was easier to fake or c) the Twitter app got blacklisted for a high number of "revokes"

Maybe they cleaned up a bunch of 'spam' votes?

Online polls are dumb, but here's some background on the current one:

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

It's pretty saddening that some random programmer is going to let his own ego kill the chance to make a statement (yes, I know you personally know POY means nothing. The masses don't, move on.) about privacy and surveillance, all "for the lulz".

Wish they went for something else that wouldn't be easily mistaken for a genuine result. It could even encourage another pop singer next year to do a similar stunt or make this bizarre dancing look cool for young people.

I know that Miley Cyrus is definitely not person of the year. But if she were to win, that would be hilarious. I can't imagine a single person taking it seriously or respecting the result.

more of a gimmick, The results will be completely different, ultimately the editors will decide.. clever way to generate hits :/

Is this some sort of cruel nightmare? This is everything that's wrong with the world.

Miley Cyrus essentially wore not very much on live TV and everyone went partially insane for 6 months. Snowden revealed a tyrannical regime to the world, risking his own freedom, so that we could take action and make the world a better place... yet here we are.

The latter is regarded as less important, less of a standpoint in human history than some meaningless celebs rear end.

It is now, that's how your supposed to feel. History will tell a very different story. Miley will be just another singer/actress.

Miley is just another singer/actress, and it appalls me to think she's even being considered. It says this country really has turned into "Idiocracy."

1. Is an anti Snowden old media conspiracy. (isn't everything?).

2. If you want a real conspiracy, it looks like the major banks were conspiring with the FBI to assassinate Occupy Wall St leader via sniper. http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

3. Time still matters. The old and ignorant still turn to it for "news".

4. If you ever thought Snowden would beat Miley Cyrus, you obviously don't know much about America.

To be fair, a large number of Americans would be of the type to have strong negative opinions of Miley Cyrus's latest antics. It's just they are also not the type to vote in online polls.

Re: 2 - got a page number you could point a lad to to help enlighten us? thx

I went through this list:

CEO of Yahoo? (For making some teenager a millionaire) No

CEO of Twitter? (For taking the company public) No

CEO of Amazon? (For buying a newspaper) Maybe

CEO of Google? (Google does amazing things every day) Maybe

Pope? (I don't know enough about what he has done) Maybe

Person in charge of Obamacare.com? Hell no

Lebron James? Hell no

Angolena Jolie? Hell no

Hanna Montana? Hell no

Next in line to run Fed? No

Putin? (He is Snowdensitting, threw a big FU to the #1 democracy) Maybe

Obama? (Coverage for those with pre-existing conditions,forcing insurance companies to use premiums to pay for healthcare) Sure

Snowden? (Giving up freedom, family, to expose government missdeesds at 30) Sure

Mr. Syria? No

Everyone else? What did yall do?

For what this source is worth. They are claiming the poll is being hacked.

http://www.eonline.com/news/485526/miley-cyrus-leads-time-s-...

Holy crap ! I clicked the link and for a moment thought I'd been click-jacked to rate my camel toe. That should have an NSFW on it for anyone sensitive or with work colleagues around.

I'm dissapointed. I thought I would find a comment about moot on this post or at least a reference to this image ("trolling is a art"):

http://i.imgur.com/iwmk2vn.jpg

Man, Miley Cyrus just being present on this list already discredits it completely.

I remember when Julian Assange won that poll some time ago. To no one's surprise TIME didn't give him the title but as usual to some mainstream politics lackey.

I think we should hack it to make Miley Cyrus win with 100% of the votes. Just to make fun of the irrelevant.

I think I'm the only person on the Internet that didn't see that Miley Cyrus video.

And I'm not the only person on the Internet to know that what Snowden released has been 'known' to the internet community for 20+ years. A release of documents does not consititute proof of what one already knows, because we all knew this type of surveilance was being done on a regular basis BECAUSE IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN DONE[1]. Just because we use wires and bits over pen and paper doesn't mean the governments and people in control don't want to have as much information about who they are 'controlling' as they can:

    Don't try to tell me that some power can corrupt a person
    You haven't had enough to know what its like[2]

Read some (good) history sometimes too see more startling revelations of the 'unthinkable' things your governments and controllers might be doing[3][4].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_room for an example.

[2] http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nineinchnails/capitalg.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Uni...

[4] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subjects/search/?query=histo...

I find it hard to believe anyone really thinks Miley Cyrus should be Person of the Year.

Like Time magazine has any relevance left today? (Did it ever?)

Why is Bashar Al-Assad on this list?

Reading about the Time POY poll a little bit, it's supposed to be the person who has influenced the media the most. Adolf Hitler won the top slot once.

Legit Godwins above.

Was it before or after 4chan was created? :-)

The POY is for recognizing people of great impact, not for endorsing their position. Hitler was POY at one point.

Bashar is no Hitler.

And Stalin won it twice.

Miley Cyrus : a degenerated girl who can't sing without auto-tune.

But.. but... She went half naked on TV and licked a wrecking ball in her video. How artistic.

Fuck Time Magazine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com