A new report at The Wrap alleges that the Academy’s ‘Fan Favorite’ and ‘Cheer Moment’ poll winners announced during this year’s Oscars telecast may have been subject to a campaign by automated online bot accounts.
Both awards were determined by user-voted Twitter polls online in the weeks ahead of the March 27th ceremony asking users for their own Best Picture choice and their favorite movie moment of all time.
Now according to the outlet, who cite two reports from hashtag analytics tracking tool Tweetbinder, it has been alleged that the most active contributors to both polls on Twitter were apparently autonomous web programs that cast thousands of fake votes for Zack Snyder’s zombie heist film “Army of the Dead” and Snyder’s “Justice League” re-edit which respectively won the two awards.
The use of bots would explain some unusual spikes in balloting activity such as a one day jump of 25,000 votes after weeks of daily votes hovering around 15-35% of that amount.
David Kirsch, a University of Maryland professor who has studied fanbots, tells the outlet that the pro-Snyder accounts “certainly do not look like they were generated by a human user”. However they were on the edge of his research team’s cutoff point to definitively declare them bots.
The Academy is standing behind the online poll which was limited to 20 votes per Twitter handle and barred accounts less than 24 hours old. Votes cast separately on the Academy’s own website reportedly declared “Army of the Dead” as the clear winner of the ‘Fan Favorite’ award.
The organization has not ruled out conducting another fan-favorite poll next year and sent a survey to members this week seeking opinions on the use of the poll this year along with the controversial decision to pre-tape eight below-the-line category awards handouts and acceptance speeches.
Source: The Wrap
