Did Team Oprah Rig a Contest Against Zach Anner? We Investigate (thoroughly)

About 10 years ago I was approached by Oprah's producers to be on her show. I showed no interest but they were very persistent. They called me every day and tried to get me to change my mind, but I told them "No" every time. They eventually called my boss (!) and tried to get him to convince me to be on her show. Luckily, he was aware that they were harassing me and took my side and basically told them to leave me alone.<p>I respect Oprah for what she has accomplished but I detest how her producers deal with "recruiting" the people who go on her show to tell their stories. All they care about is being sensationalistic so they can hook their audience. They don't give a flying fuck about the people who go on the show or how going on the show affects them afterwards.<p>So, when I question whether Oprah's people are rigging the vote? Well, my mind is made up. It's pretty obvious to me.<p>But don't be surprised if Oprah "reaches out" to Zach and has him on her show but doesn't choose him to have his own show.

I'm not sure who the "investigators" are over at geekosystem, but while they present a lot of data, they fell over when it came to analysis of the situation (as did numerous others).<p>Scenario: For a time period, contestant B received votes at a rate of roughly 3 votes for every 2 that contestant A received. Contestant B had a different value for an unknown field that was combined as part of the cookie used in voting/vote confirmation.<p>The extra value on contestant B's call is meaningless if they're estimating that the vote rate was determined by contestant A's votes.<p>Based on the data reported of the two time periods:<p>Shawn saw a 100% increase in votes/minute<p>David saw a 66% increase in votes/minute<p>Cheryl saw a 175% increase in votes/minute<p>Maria saw a 28% increase in votes/minute<p>Jasbina saw a 100% increase in votes/minute<p>Jacqueline saw a 13% increase in votes/minute<p>Kornelius saw a 10% increase in votes/minute<p>Zach and Phyllis saw a decrease in votes/minute<p>Total rate of increase in voting (excluding Zach and Phyllis) was 31% increase in voting rate for the non-top 2 positions. If we include Zach and Phyllis, there was a drop in voting rate to almost 50% of the previous number of votes per minute.<p>Determination: eid probably played a large role in the cause of what appeared to be tampering of voting. There's no correlation between votes of any candidate and any other candidate. The most likely cause? The reported vote counts are not 100% live. The votes are processed on a server and displayed via a cache. Most likely EID is a way to force vote counting onto a specific system, which caused a backup of cast but un-counted votes for Phyllis. While the backup was being cleared, the rate of voting appeared distinctly high. Once the cause of the backup was identified and resolved, the backup was quickly cleared out and the rate of votes appearing took a sharp drop as there was no backlog for that candidate and the others still had backlogs to process.

I think this is extremely interesting; not because of the supposed "rigging" but because of the uproar and sleuthing of the community as a result of perceived misdoings. I mean, just think that this random guy Zach Anner has all these people behind him because of one video. And then something fishy starts happening and they all flock to it.<p>What are they more interested in? Catching "Oprah" in the act of allowing someone to effectively cheat or do they genuinely want this guy to win?

It reminds me of the Times poll where moot won.<p>And guys, please don't feel bad if Zach loses for some absurdity. Remember that this contest is being rigged on 4chan's side too. There are tons of people using macros and I've even seen messages like "now that Zach is winning, let's DDoS the site."<p>Not that I don't find that fun, but don't hold your breath.

Despite having the word "Oprah" in the title this is one of the best "hacker" stories I've seen here in a while.<p>Particuarly how the votes "slowed down" at the removal of the suspect code, amazingly good reverse-engineering on their end.

I don't find this submission HN worthy.