(Above photo is a sample from the 46 screen shots taken to document possible vote tampering)
Online Photos Demand Answers From 98.1 The One & Banks Sweet Soca Competition
Technology is welcomed and has played a vital role in the development and advancement of mankind. At times that said technology and increased knowledge are used in self fulfilling and greedy ways.
That leads me to my topic at hand… 98.1 The One & Banks Sweet Soca Competition.
Apparently some artistes have been getting a rather generous boost in votes from seemingly suspicious means.
On my investigation of these bold claims I was quite intrigued by my findings.
The matter was brought to my attention around 22:50 June 29, 2009. I must add that it took me a while to actually lend my resources to same as i was engaged in what I thought at the time was more pertinent.
On inspection of the claim involving vote tampering at around 23:50 the votes per artiste stood as follows:
Aritste: Blood
Song: Back It Up
Votes: 14688
Artiste: Mr. Dale
Song: Come Out
Votes: 5157
Artiste: Statement
Song: All Night Till Mornin’
Votes: 3437
Artiste: TC
Song: Hot Sun & Riddim
Votes: 3299
Artiste: Tarah Holdipp
Song: Hottie Hottie Gal
Votes: 2906
Artiste: Lorenzo
Song: Good Vibes
Votes: 620
Artiste: Lil Rick
Song: Carnival Jucks
Votes: 545
Artiste: William Watts
Song: Busted
Votes: 59
What follows next is mind-blowing… shocking at the least! What you are about to see are screen shots taken of the following website (www.barbadoscropoverfestival.com) between 23:49 Jun 29, 2009 & 01:04 Jun 30, 2009. The pictures speak for themselves.
I invite you to pay attention to the times of the screen shots and the first two artistes on the list namely Blood & Mr. Dale.
Photobucket Still Picture Screenshot Views
Am I paranoid or does all evidence lead to some form of foul play? Is this actually possible? Something is definitely ‘fishy’ here to me, after all it unfolded before my very eyes.
On even further investigation of the site in which the activity was purported by my technical assistant it was found that inadequate security measures were put in place to deter dishonesty by players or supporters of persons within the competition. Investigations revealed that persons were able to vote multiple times or in batch by either a) reseting their internet browsers i.e deleting cache, cookies, history etc or by (b) running a script encompassing elements of (a) to yield catapulting results.
As you can see Blood at the time of writing this post was already sitting comfortably on top with 16,000+ votes with Mr. Dale trailing behind with a steady rising figure of 9000+.
All this being said… in the spirit of Crop Over and the festival upon us this should never be happening, so I appeal to the major players and fellow citizens like myself to put an end to this at once. In my opinion this competition is a farce and something needs to be done urgently to correct the wrong doing that has transpired. Lets not let a few bad apples destroy ‘we culture’.
NB: Dirkmouse “Da Bouse” does not blame or hold any artiste or individual responsible for any material contained or discussed within.
—
Kurt Linton
a.k.a Dirkmouse “Da Bouse”
Website: http://www.dirkmouse.com
Good link BFP. Interesting observation Kurt. I will be passing this story on for sure.
Gosh!!!
Are you actually saying that we shouldn’t trust everything we read on the Wibbly Wobbly Web?
Say it ain’t so Joe!
A number of countries are looking into online voting for national elections.
“I don’t think so!”
FYI folks the online voting has officially been cancelled by the NCF, following confirmation that an anomaly was discovered in the voting process. Only text voting will count in the competition now and none of those online votes cast in the past few days will count towards the competition.
I realised that something was wrong also when i saw at one point Blood was 10000 votes ahead of the person in second place less than 24 hours after online voting began.
The NCF was warned about these hi tech methods in competitions and have the example of canvassing in the people’s Monarch. They cannot now just “scrap” the online votes cast as they could face litigation. They would be advised to discontinue the facility but the votes already cast should be valid. I have recieved text messages soliciting my vote from more than one competitor. The whole idea IS THWART WITH RISKS.
“Thwart”???
lol!
Well the online voting was free, no? It cost them nothing to vote. This sweet soca competition was flawed from the start. Why can’t they be judged in the tent and go forward to compete?
Agreed! Placement in a competition should be by a judged performance – WITH CRITERIA!
Unfortunately, without requiring authentication of some form (ie, supply your mobile number, get a token that validates your vote [costs the vote/survey runner money]), any popularity vote is going to have problems when done on-line. There are no real defences available for anonymous voting – cookies are easily wiped/ignored and IP address counting (only 5 votes from that IP) punishes those behind a corporate proxy or on an unstable connection.
Pity 98.1 hadn’t bothered to read up on on-line popularity votes – there are numerous examples of how it’s a fairly bad idea (iirc, Something Awful members manipulated one quite well only a few months ago, spelling something out with the first letters of the options). Ah well, nothing new there I suppose.
Every year I duz fuhget all de problems and guhdown dey an wukkup stink stink me and a pint na haff why dem cant do like me wunna doan no me but I duz see wunna.
(Facebook – BEFORE DirkMouse)
“Vote for me …. several times:)
To members of Blood’s Fans”
“Text using your LIME or Digicel Mobile phone or vote online at http://www.barbadoscropoverfestival.com To text using a LIME mobile phone, text to SweetSoca along with the name of your favorite artist to 2216 To text using a Digicel mobile phone, text to SweetSoca along with the name of your favorite artist to 3976 All texts cost Bds$1.00.
Back It Up
Blood”
My Contention – Is there no programme to recognise and accept cookies from only one voter at a time? Ditto with texts, then there could be a far more democratic process