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Cheating, lack of accountability & lack of enforcement in online contests
Recently I have been involved (directly or indirectly) in a number of online contests that require obtaining the most votes, or obtaining the most comments on a post to win something. And I’ve learned a few things. First, people cheat. Second, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in holding cheaters accountable. I guess when you are getting tens of thousands of hits to your website off one contest, and money to boot, ethics go out the window.
Samsung and TwitterMoms
A few weeks ago, TwitterMoms held a contest where the prize was a brand new Samsung Washer and Dryer. In order to be eligible to win, you had to write a blog post, display a badge, Tweet about the contest and get THE MOST number of comments on your blog post. Tiffany from Babes and Kids is a member of the MomDot community and we rallied around her to try and help her win by leaving comments on her post whenever we could. At one point in the contest, she noticed that a couple of the other contestants seemed to be getting comments with an unnatural speed and pattern (likely using scripts to generate comments) and pointed some of the discrepancies out to TwitterMoms. She was given reassurance that they would scrutinize the top comment getters to make sure that everything was fair.
In the end, an email was released indicating that they believed there was cheating, it all but accused Tiffany of not playing fair by accusing people of cheating (so pointing out cheaters to help ensure the integrity of a contest is apparently frowned upon) and it also said they were changing the contest rules and it would now be a random drawing. Rather than spending some time and maybe a few dollars to verify the comments on the top vote getter’s sites, for the sake of both TwitterMoms and Samsung’s reputations, they simply decided to avoid it altogether and change the rules.
And the winner they chose….had no comments on her post, she apparently did not have the required badge on her site nor did she fulfill the Twitter requirement either. How is THAT for playing fair with the contest rules?
You can read a full account of Tiffany’s story here: Twitter Moms & Samsung, Not Playing Fair. You can also read some other posts about this situation here: TwitterMoms & Samsung Fiasco, Samsung have you lost your minds?, Blogger Ethics Setback, and Another side to Samsung Twitter mom contest.
I understand that sometimes things go wrong. I understand that it is not easy to police these things. But I also believe that the person running it should have stepped up and made a statement that cheaters will not be tolerated and dealt with it swiftly and surely. This is something that is OWED to the people who did play fair, and the people who continue to drive traffic to TwitterMoms and Samsung.
NatureMade / SAM-e Blogging Gig
Personally, I have been involved in the NatureMade SAM-e Good Mood Gig contest which has as it’s prize, a 6-month blogging job with a very generous paycheck. The first phase of the contest involves accruing enough votes to be one of the top 20 vote-getters. Those top 20 then move on to phase 2 and a winner is chosen from there. The voting is via an online form that claims to allow 1 vote per IP address per day. The terms and conditions for the contest state this regarding how you may go about getting votes:
Use of any automated, script, software, macro or robotic program or any other automated or improper means to submit or gain votes or any other attempt to vote or obtain votes in any way that conflicts with these Terms or instructions or restrictions on the Web Site or from Pharmavite, may result in the disqualification of the votes at issue, the relevant application, or both, in Pharmavite’s sole discretion.
The first couple of days that I was in the competition, people seemed to be earning votes at a normal, reasonable rate. I was not winning, but I had managed, through the support of my friends to get to the top 20 but competition was tough! I would look at the vote counts frequently throughout each day to see how I was doing in comparison to everyone else. I checked out the top 20 but also the people behind me to see how fast they were gaining ground. Then one day, after about a week, within the span of a few hours, I noticed that a few people had went from nothing to over 1,000 votes where it had taken me almost a week to earn 300 or so.
I obviously cannot prove that people are using scripts to get votes, but I was concerned that the terms and conditions do not guarantee that cheaters will be disqualified. A lot of people are spending their valuable time voting for me so I wanted to make sure that the contest was going to be fair.
I emailed Ignite Social Media, the firm running the contest for Nature-Made. I politely asked them if they could assure me that using scripts to obtain votes would be cause for disqualification. I indicated that not only would I NOT cheat, even though I could easily find someone to help me, I do not want to waste my time and the time of the people supporting me if other people are being allowed to cheat. On top of that, I was not actually interested in representing a company that would not stand up and uphold an ethical contest.
I never heard back.
So as much as I feel like I might be letting people down because they took their valuable time out to vote for me day after day, I am formally withdrawing from the competition. I have emailed Ignite Social Media and indicated to them as such (although I have no idea if they will bother to pull my application down). All I wanted from them was assurance that they are running a fair contest, but instead I got ignored.
I have thought long and hard about this, and I don’t believe that the voting methods are up to the standards that I have set for myself – honesty and fairness. It is not fair to me and the other applicants who also refuse to cheat, but mostly it is not fair to all of you who have rallied behind me to help me earn votes honestly. And if the company cannot promise a fair competition, I don’t think they are a company I want to work for anyway.
Again, I have no proof that anyone has done anything wrong in the SAM-e Good Mood Gig competition, nor can I be sure they do not intend on disqualifying cheaters but I also no longer trust the system. And for me to continue day in and day out and promote voting for me when I am this cynical about the methods used is just simply stress that I do not need. And frankly, as far as good moods go, I am very far from one right now when it comes to my participation.
Companies, bloggers & contest entrants need to be held accountable
I originally intended to bow out of the contest a little more quietly, but I feel that there is an issue here that needs to be addressed. The internet, and mom blogs especially are innundated with contests. Whether you are earning votes for a title (such as ‘best food blogger’) or to win a prize, the system is severely broken. It is easy to cheat using scripts and other methods and if the companies who are holding the contests cannot find a way to run them fairly (and guarantee it to the other participants who are not breaking the rules), then the methods need to change. But more importantly, they need to uphold the integrity of these contests by making sure that if cheating occurs that it is dealt with and not ignored or brushed under the rug.
Contests are great marketing. They bring traffic and get people buzzing about the products like nothing else can. But the ramifications of negative press if there are problems are going to bring twice as much attention to the brand than any amount of free giveaways, and it’s not positive attention. I won’t be buying a Samsung product any time soon and I wonder if my conscious will cause me to find a different vitamin brand (I will miss the buy-one-get-one sales at Walgreens). I also canceled my TwitterMoms membership and unsubscribed to the newsletter.
And in the end, the bloggers are going to suffer from the backlash. Companies will no longer run contests like this and who knows, they may stop working with mom bloggers altogether. We will be left with the stereotype that we cannot be trusted – like life in general, there are some who are dishonest but the majority are not. And if there are no systems in place to hold the corrupt ones accountable it will only fester and grow until the phrase “mom blogger” elicits an attitude of disdain and disgust.
But the question is, can you enforce accountability with only your voice? I don’t know. But I’m definitely willing to try.
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50 comments for “Cheating, lack of accountability & lack of enforcement in online contests”
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My son in currently entered into the Next-Direct modeling contest. Grand Prize…100k college scholarship. I am having the same problem…no matter how many votes I get in a day..it seem we can’t catch up.. something fishy is definatley going on. But I’m determined to keep trying the honest way…
so, I would love for you to help out by voting for my 5 yr old son eli!
http://apps.facebook.com/next_direct/gallery/show_entry/21193
Thanks a bunch!
On the bright side those cheaters who won may have a brilliant career in Climate Science.
I agree with you Kim. Not to sound like a sore loser but I was involved in a contest like this. I personally won’t beg for votes or do anything that I see alot. If someone wants to vote for me for anything cool, if not cool. I figure if I’m meant to win, I will. That being said, cheating is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
Thanks for the support Angie!
I found this article and the ensuing comments most enlightening. Can you imagine the incentive when the “prize” has a potential value of $100,000? I have been following voting patterns in the Class Act Canada competition (see http://classactcanada.com/) wherein ten “winners” will be awarded “an all-expenses paid education at a Sprott-Shaw Community College campus in British Columbia, Canada, valued at up to $100,000 per scholarship. The prize will include a degree/diploma course at Sprott-Shaw College (BC campuses only), books and tuition, airfare to and from hometown, food and lodging, and transportation to and from the selected Sprott-Shaw College.” Similar to what you described in your examples, the voting has been tremendously erratic and suspiciously voluminous in support of some contestants with egregiously banal video postings. This is unfortunate because the contest does create a wonderful educational opportunity for people from around the world. The final decision of the judges will ultimately determine whether they simply look at the final vote tallies or whether they attempt to identify and dismiss to any voting activities that appear manipulative, unrepresentative, or disproportionate. The Class Act Canada competition closes on November 6 and the winners will be announced on December1. One hopes that the ultimate winners will be truly deserving of such a wonderful prize, having won with honour and integrity and not simply on-line voting prowess. Unfortunately, your experience doesn’t inspire great optimism.
I’m glad to hear your opinion, Graham, about this strange contest from Sprott Shaw. There is something so fishy about the way votes leap ahead. If it is a public relations exercise on the part of that college, I’m convinced they have lost any credibility in running this strange scholarship program. Many of the candidates clearly are desperate for the promised support.I look forward to learning the next steps as a doubt very much anyone gets all that free.
Kim, thank you very much for starting a productive discussion of this questionable practice. If nothing else, I do hope those who run such manipulative campaigns are held accountable. I’ll do what I can to see that it is so.
Marian,
It is sad that this discussion even has to happen, but the sad truth is that people cheat and all too often, it seems like the contest organizers are just happy to have all the traffic.
I hope you can shed some light on this issue with the contest Graham mentioned. That is a huge prize to award to cheaters…
Graham,
Wow, I hope for a prize like that someone is holding the contest organizers responsible and the ultimate winners are ones who participated with integrity.
I posted my concerns on the contest’s Facebook website. I eventually received a response from the contest officials that that their judges are “smarter than you [me] give them credit for” to which I responded “With respect, my concern was never whether the ploy would be discerned by the judges, but whether and to what extent such extraevidential considerations would be factors in their adjudication. Thank you for this reassurance.” I guess we’ll just have to see how this plays out. I hope that the honest and honourable contestants fair better than you did in your contest encounter. I’ll keep you posted.
Haha your response was awesome! The question though is right on…will they enforce a fair and ethical contest? At least you got a response, however rude it was.
I am curious how it works out, please let me know.
Kim: The contest ended and I made some interesting observations about the detectability of the amateurish manipulation of vote counts. I will be anxious to see how the judges respond. What most people fail to realize is that any “natural” voting should adhere to some form of adoption harmonic. In an effort to garner votes, contestants reach out to close contacts (family, friends, and associates) for support. A network of support becomes established, with these close contacts reaching out to their family, friends, and associates for support. The responsiveness of these networks becomes further and further diluted with each degree of separation from the contestant. Sustained voting over prolonged intervals creates an attrition harmonic, wherein voting numbers deteriorate due to slippage (voting inevitably begins to slip from a dedicated 24 hour cycle) and/or a waning persistence (loss of aggression, dedication, or commitment to voting). Finally, there is an inevitable time-of-day harmonic. There will be time intervals where voting incidence peaks and other times where voting wanes. These patterns will vary from contestant to contestant, but will be fairly consistent when adjusted for different time zones (assuming similar age demographics amongst voters). The bottom line is that serial analyses of voting activities should reveal patterns that are consistent with these harmonics. In the Class Act Canada contest, many voting patterns became irregular and improbable over Phase 2 of the contest (lasting three weeks), presumably as contestants honed their “voting machines.” The sporadic and disjunctive patterns of some contestants towards the end of Phase 2 undoubtedly reflect experimentation with efforts to “tune” script protocols to the realities of the vote registration infrastructure. Having established and roughly refined voting embellishment protocols in Phase 2, it became possible for contestant supporters to launch them immediately in Phase 3 (the “money round”) one week later. It is here where some additional contra-intuitive harmonics began to surface. Essentially, the perpetrators had no idea how to ramp up or down their automated voting in a credible fashion. Hence, the “machine” either worked (sustained voting embellishment at a relatively fixed rate), or it failed (hung up or “glitched out”, with voting numbers plummeting to an unembellished rate). In the end, it defies credibility that any candidate could cultivate logarithmic increases in levels of sustained support (500% increases in sustained hourly voting rates) without any discernable adoption harmonics over the brief 7-day hiatus between Phase 2 and Phase 3 of this contest. There were some unfortunate casualties in the process. The voting onslaught may have been fatally demoralizing for one candidate who seemed to simply abandon hope and cease all voting at one point in the contest. It also may have wooed several other, hitherto unsullied, contestants over to “the dark side” in a futile effort to compete with the improbable but well established vote accumulations of frontrunners. Another interesting phenomenon was the fuelling effect that increased intensities had on competing serial voters. The voting rates climbed from highly improbable to virtually impossible during these voting sprints. In fairness to all of the contestants involved, it must be noted that the contest rules did not specifically prohibit these tactics (and indeed the impropriety may not have occurred to some contestants). However, it certainly complicates any efforts to fairly adjudicate this contest and to award the prizes to the most deserving contestants.
Graham, I have read your comments here and on accidentalmommies.com and I could’nt agree more. I entered the Class Act contest and my 3 kids and I spent hours every day recruiting people to vote for me. I am a single mom who has been working 3 jobs for the past 12 years to support myself and my 3 kids. In one of my jobs I work as a Care Aide at a Children’s Hospice with terminally ill children. The staff, volunteers and families of the children all believe that I would make a great nurse and they diligently voted for me. My kids started a FB group, which had 498 members who voted every day. At my other 2 jobs hundreds of people also voted for me. The Harvest Project, which supplies people in need with free food and clothing, has sent out a press release about me and I did an interview with Simi Sara on her radio show. My video had been viewed 2 445 times. Every one of my votes has been casted by a real person. I am extremely disappointed by the way the competition has been administered and I feel that all the time and effort that my supporters invested, has been a waste. I will never associate myself again with anything that requires on line
voting. This has been a very disappointing experience for me.
Hi Elmi:
I’m sorry to hear of your experience. I had similar misgivings after efforts to support my nephew came up similarly short. Like you, I invoked support from a broad and diverse network of friends and associates. I am a University professor and I serve on the boards of a number of international organizations, and I knew there would be good support for him from all of these quarters. This support commitment was sustained by my pledge to shave my head if he was successful (which clearly delighted my students and colleagues). I obviously was aware of the various cheating options for online voting, but my nephew and I knew from the outset that this was no way to win anything. However, it was frustrating to watch the relentless and improbable gains of others who obviously were guided by a different ethical compass. I was heartened by Class Act’s earlier posting that seemed to suggest that the judges were tuned in to this activity (our judges are smarter than you give them credit for), but it seems so pervasive that I don’t honestly believe they’ll know how to deal with it. Good luck with your future career objectives. It sounds like you did an amazing job recruiting support…I’m sure you kids are proud of your creative efforts and of your steadfast integrity throughout this contest.
Elmi,
I’m sorry you had such a rotten experience, I too am pretty disillusioned with online contest that require voting. Like Graham said, it sounds like your kids can be proud of your efforts though.
Graham,
I hope they listen to your obviously intelligent reasoning on this matter and really examine the voting and the trends and the obvious improbability of some of the vote counts.
I hope that you will come back here and report that they chose ethics…sadly I’m not optimistic but I hope I am wrong.
The Class Act Canada contest is now history….and I guess the outcome was rather predictable…. The judges were faced with an unenviable dilemma. Having failed at the outset to recognize the vulnerability of the voting protocols to contamination from mechanized voting; having failed to explicitly identify this behavior as “cheating” with concomitant penalties for offenders; having provided so-inclined contestants with two preparatory contest phases over which they could hone their voting protocols; having failed to redress such inequitable practices during the final phase of the contest; with so many contestants having obviously availed themselves of this data-embellishment opportunity; and having publicly boasted that the contest attracted 4,340,441 votes (with legitimacy implied); Class Act Canada is left with no ethical high ground from which a compelling adjudication could occur. It becomes impossible to discount the manifest vote numbers without publicly conceding the vulnerability of the voting process to automated manipulation. Having done this, the logical damage control options would be to dismiss this factor as inconsequential “noise” in the voting process; or to suggest that there was a level playing field because all contestants had identical opportunities to “cheat” the system; or to suggest that the profundity of some contestant presentations was sufficient to overcome huge voting disparities. In the end, I suppose each of the judges was left to select the “Class Act Canada champions” based on her or his personal adjudication of everything that occurred safe in the knowledge that the results are immutable. I gather that winners are “required to correctly answer, without assistance of any kind, whether mechanical or otherwise, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question” in order to claim their prizes. May I suggest the following question?
Calculate (1+?)
I expect that some of the “Class Act Canada champions” may correctly respond that the answer is 4.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609…
When this happens, the judges might question whether a prospective Class Act Canada champion could be cheating. However, it would seem rather late in the game to be concerned about contestant integrity, so I think you should just give them the benefit of the doubt…as you already you have throughout Phases two and three of the contest. On the bright side for Sprott Shaw, you now have some excellent intelligence concerning potential gaps and redundancies in your current curricula at Sprott Shaw. Based on the manifest skill sets of the contest “winners”, you can certainly reduce significantly the amount of time devoted to computing studies. The time freed up might logically be devoted to selected topics in Applied Ethics. These courses typically entail “the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment.” The first assignment could focus on contrasting deontological (“the ends do not justify the means”) and teleological (“the ends justify the means”) theories with respect to winning admission to Sprott Shaw College. The challenge may be to find someone at Sprott Shaw with the audacity to teach such a course.
This is really interesting to me, I’m particpating in the Sam-E contest and it would really make me angry if other people were cheating by using scripts. I know I’ve had to put effort into getting the votes I have. I knew going in that it was going to be something of a popularity contest and was fine with that, but if no effort is being put into screening out scripts, then I’m very disappointed.
That said, I hope that all of the people currently in the top 20 (which doesn’t include me) aren’t being under suspicion of cheating. I know one of the bloggers and I’m sure she’s getting votes the honest way. Like others have said it taints all of us when others cheat.
I admire you for taking a stand for what you believe in. I don’t know if I’ll pull out of the contest, but it has given me food for thought.
Tracy,
I too hope no one is cheating for the sake of people who are working honestly at getting votes. While I would have an issue if they were, my problem was more with the people running it not standing up and saying “yes, we guarantee we will remove cheaters from the competition.” I just wanted some confirmation that is being run fairly, without it I just wasn’t comfortable spending time promoting it.
I’m not asking anyone else to follow suit, I did what was best for me.
Good luck!
I just heard about the Samsung thing yesterday, it is just awful… I don’t Twitter, so I was not part of it at all, but it is so sad when people who are supposed to be in charge of these things first of all, don’t even keep track of them, and second, when it is brought to their attention, they just sweep it under the carpet.
I applaud you, Kim, not only for your integrity, but for your attempt to change the status quo! Good for you!!!
if i found cheating on a contest of mine, i would kick the winner, plain and simple. Twitter moms not doing it is just lack of personal responsibility. Companies should get back to grass roots instead.
Sorry so late.. just getting back into the bloggy thang since being on vaycay..
GREAT POST! Sadly, I don’t have the smarts (or the time) to figure out how to cheat. LOL. You are a pillar in our community, sister!
I heard about the Samsung fiasco for the 1st time just a few days ago – and now this. Why does it still stun me that people are just rude? Don’t people have any kind of conscious? I am so glad to know that you do, even if it meant withdrawing from something that was obviously important to you. Hopefully someday companies can police these contests better and disqualify the cheaters right away. Sorry that you had to deal with all of this!
Thanks for the support Jill!
that sure seems like a lot of effort – cheating. I had no idea you could do that. I did try to enter a contest a few weeks ago and could not leave a comment, I emailed the blog owner and she just wrote back saying go leave a comment. well thank you but I COULDN’T I thought I made that abudantly clear. while its fun to enter, I don’t have the time, sometimes sites are slow or the forms don’t work and its more effort than its worth because it just irritates me. and then when the contests are difficult it makes me want to avoid that blog. I don’t think I enter many of yours just cause the whole go here, do this, do that thing…I don’t understand twitter, don’t allow strangers on my facebook so…it keeps me out of a lot of things. plus I hate the checkback here thing…I get its helping them to get hits but c’mon you can’t email me if I win? was just thinking about that last night.