Something happened today at the Daily Mail? sHillbots.

originally posted by: Dr X
why would anyone read the daily mail?

Because it makes poor toilet paper.

originally posted by: SudoNim

originally posted by: MotherMayEye

originally posted by: SudoNim
The ignorance of some Trump supporters, anytime you see anything or anyone that is pro-Hillary or anti-Trump and you claim its CTR.

It happened and I am not a Trump supporter.

What happened? You noticed the pro-Hillary/anti-Trump comments had higher green arrows than pro-Trump/anti-Hillary ones?

It's your illogical jump to seeing something that you don't like and calling foul play which I found ignorant.

Did you not read the OP?

There is more to it than your oversimplification of the matter.

The research on this topic is excellent!
Anyone have any new ideas as to how this could be set up?

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: WeAre0ne

Thank you for your response. So creating a program to do this so multiple people have the same ability would be difficult as they can't have overlapping IP's so can't be the exact same program duped.

That does complicate some things a bit.

That's where a bot-net comes in useful. You have a command-and-control system that allows one computer to send instructions to hundreds if not thousands of host systems. You just need to send the command to "click on this widget on this Web page" and thousands of systems will do that. Each will have its own IP address so no problems there.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
The research on this topic is excellent!
Anyone have any new ideas as to how this could be set up?

I have more to add!

So,...yesterday, it became apparent that some kind of bot is targeting people at the DailyMail who leave anti-Trump or pro-Hillary comments....but mainly anti-Trump, from what I can tell.

Someone is attaching some kind of script to these targeted DM accounts and it awards masses of up votes instantaneously.

On the flip side, some other accounts are being targeted for masses of down votes, too....mainly pro-Trump people, but my account got the down vote bot for commenting on this little voting scam going on.

With this in mind, last night I used an alternate DM account and left a small handful of anti-Trump comments on an article about the nude Trump statues.

I was fishing to attract whoever is behind this with the hope they would attach an up vote bot to my account.

The last comment I left before I went bed said, "That's it. I am swearing off orange tic-tacs, 4-life."

When I went to the Daily Mail this morning, I could tell my experiment was a success. All of the anti-Trump comments I left last night had hundreds of green arrows....


....AND so did TWO comments that I left on an Amber Heard/Johnny Depp article.


Believe me, my comments about Amber Heard & Johnny Depp were not so awesome to warrant 700 upvotes. And, in fact, no one else posting on the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp article, at around the time I did, had anywhere 700 upvotes...maybe a couple of dozen or so.

So, I tried testing out the new bot i acquired this morning with some comments. But none of them were getting massive arrows.

I also noticed there weren't any other comments getting the anomalous massive arrows. So, I wondered if DM had resolved the issue and I proceeded to then poke fun at some of the anti-Trump folks that had been getting hundreds of up arrows but weren't anymore.

I actually posted a few snarky comments about the bot-vote scam, as well...several others have been commenting on it, too.

THEN, about two hours ago or so, ALL of my comments from this morning suddenly had hundreds of upvotes, again. And I noticed a few other people had the same.

This prompted me to leave two more comments -- one on a political article and one on an entertainment article. But I noticed this vote-bot is 'off,' again. The two comments have a normal amount of upvotes...like 10-20, right now.

So, I have been thinking this vote-bot is activated when someone behind it logs in to Daily Mail and it is 'suspended' when they sign off. Or there is a interval time system in use.

I'll update again after observing further what's going on with my own botted-account.

If one was to Google "thebot" daily mail... You should see someone asking for a bot for up votes on Daily Mail...

I also have a forum where they were discussing one they knew it could be done but weren't sure how... I'm am going to try to keep digging...

If people are capable of hacking government programs and websites then it seems to me that rigging the arrows would be a piece of cake..

originally posted by: misfit312
If one was to Google "thebot" daily mail... You should see someone asking for a bot for up votes on Daily Mail...

Here is a screenshot to pile up the evidence of your claim. Nice find!

a reply to: SoulSurfer

Here it is:

Okay, i want a bot that will vote up comments on Dailymail.co.uk
The bot must allow proxies, and a list of urls with the comments on, for example

dailymail.co.uk/comment1
dailymail.co.uk/comment2
dailymail.co.uk/comment3

Each page will have different comments by me, so each comment will be different. I then want the bot to visit that page with a proxy and up vote the comment. Also, it must be done with httprequest or something faster than the built in web browser I need it to vote up hundreds or thousands of times, prfrebly in a half hour period for the latter.

S****Crash, Nov 16, 2014

Edt:
Further in the discussion the poster is told by another...I can do it for you. Email me.

a reply to: IAMTAT

Interesting!

Especially considering this same kind of thing was happening leading up to the BREXIT vote.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: IAMTAT

Interesting!

Especially considering this same kind of thing was happening leading up to the BREXIT vote.

I think we've found the birthday of your DM upvote bot.

Here is another forum talking about it and I think I can link that here..I wasn't sure about the bot site..

I admit while I know a bit about computer repair I'm not into all the programming stuff that can be done...Here are some quotes from another forum

The Wail doesn't require you to be logged in. I'd guess that a simple wget run in a loop would do the trick, although I haven't looked. The button press will call a URL and the only protection against multiple votes would be a cookie set in the response, remove that and you can vote again. It's hard to block multiple votes from a single IP address because of NAT being so common.

You could easily write a script to auomate the voting. I am surprised that it does not happen more often. Open Firefox, right click on either the red or green arrow (One that you have not voted on.) and then hit the Inspect Element. Whilst the Inspector is open click that arrow up, or down depending upon whether you are looking at a green or red arrow, and see what changes.

It's slightly more complex than that - I just looked - as all the comment stuff is generated on the fly so the inspector doesn't show anything beyond a div. However, a bit of jiggery pokery with Chrome's network debug tab will show you the URL called when you click the arrow.From there, as you say, all you need to do is script it up, making sure to ignore any cookies, and you're good to go.

Daily Mail Online - Green Arrow Manipulation

This website checks Daily Mail Online Comments for vote manipulation. Graphs of up-votes and down-votes provide evidence of unusual voting patterns. The Daily Mail Online article comment section allows anyone to post comments. Readers can rate those comments by awarding a red or green arrow. The Best rated tab reveals the comments most in tune with reader opinion. Or normally it does…

Sometimes, comments contrary to the majority view receive many green arrows in a short time. Articles about UKIP (UK Independence Party) are the main focus of these manipulated comments but any articles likely to upset those with left-wing views are at risk.


Update: They now vote-rig almost every single article mentioning UKIP, Brexit and Trump. And visit individual user accounts, applying thousands of red arrows to every comment the person has ever made about anything. They have a new vote bot able to apply 64,000 votes an hour and they are making full use of it.


Note: The number of rigged articles has become ridiculous. US political articles are popular with these trolls but we cannot afford to check them. If someone with deep pockets would like to take over this website please contact us.

Select any article below to see graphs of the top ten Best rated and Worst rated. For more detailed results select an individual commenter.

Commenter’s names are under the graph, in order of rating. You should pay particular attention to unnatural voting patterns and the number of red arrows. The "About" section has a good example.

I don't know if I can link to this site but if you add these words together... 'Fake' 'Green' 'Arrows'...

a reply to: misfit312

See my other posts, its not as easy as claimed there.

They do block by IP.

a reply to: WeAre0ne

Ok,cool,Like I said not on the up and up with how to get started with bots or scripts....

But I did just try this and was able to upvote the same story twice from my phone and twice on my tablet.. Once on the website and once in the app...Then I was able to upvote once from~my computer,both my daughters phones(on the app),my sons phone(website) and my daughters tablet(website)...All on the same article all on WiFi...

I will say the app for some stories has a completely different upvote count than the website..

a reply to: misfit312

I can do the same! I can vote through different devices and different apps, on the same comment, even though they all use the same IP.

Also, I noticed the vote count is slightly different between apps...but so are the comments that appear. It seems it takes longer to see new comments on my phone app than on my laptop or through the browser on my phone

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Well this is interesting I found a Turkish site with this for download if you are a registered member...

originally posted by: misfit312

Look how recent that is!

a reply to: misfit312

Crap. Wrong answer. I should have said it's more logical that the DM mods are behind this.

*heavy snark*

What's surprising to me...is that so many people want to influence DM comment votes...to the point where special bots for it are being designed and sold.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
What's surprising to me...is that so many people want to influence DM comment votes...to the point where special bots for it are being designed and sold.

It's popular...no matter how tabloidish it is. And it attracts a large conservative audience and always has since I've been familiar with it, for easily 5 years.

Therefore, their audience must be destroyed, drown-out, mocked, and marginalized.

I don't like a lot of what people have to say, at the DM, but I don't believe 'watering down' voices and 'lifting' others, with a bot, is healthy or good for anyone.

Also, I have noticed that the DM seems to be attracting some new 'anti-Trump' voices lately....not just because of this bot. There are more anti-Trump/pro-Hillary comments, overall. I am so ok with hearing out everyone's opinion, but most of these new comments are just as bad, rabid, and empty as the worst conservative comments. AND..the timing of their arrival is suspect.

Also, there are not anywhere near enough new commenters to explain 700, 1100, 4500 up/down arrows happening instantly.