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It is being reported that the upcoming 94th Academy Awards will be having a new addition. One of which is the Top Fan-Voted Film.

"Beginning this Monday, Twitter users will get to vote on their favorite films that were released in 2021 — regardless of if the film was nominated for an Oscar — using the hashtag #OscarsFanFavorite. The film that receives the most fan votes by March 3 will be recognized during the awards broadcast on March 27."^[1]

Furthermore, "for both the fan-favorite film and cheer moment campaigns, Twitter users will be able to tweet out their submissions up to 20 times a day."^[Ibid.]

I was thinking of the gambling implication of this. What if somebody places a huge bet, say, a million or two, on a particular film and then activates all kinds of bots and thousands of fake Twitter accounts that could spam the platform of votes 20 times a day every single day from the beginning of voting until the end? In other words, is this open for manipulation?

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[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/oscars-twitter-2022-1235092124/

I believe only few bookmaker offering this kind of special offer. Yes this kind of Social media voting is very prone to manipulation due to the existence of Bots and each account twitter doesn't need to be verify so anyone can create multiple account to vote.

But I doubt that Casino will include this kind of offer since this is very risky on there side. Maybe they will only include betting the traditional bet option they are offering.

I think it's possible for the Oscars committee to communicate with the Twitter tech team to handle the data so that any malicious or suspected bot activity involved would get handled manually? Cause if not, then yea I'd have to agree, manipulation would be rather obvious at some point and would probably kill the purpose of the fan-favorite voting system. Might as well remove it again tbh. That, or gambling would never really be connected anymore with it. If manipulation was obvious, I don't think people would indulge on it anw.

As practice shows, even blockchain-based social networks are susceptible to manipulation. Of course Twitter does not have sufficient protection against bots, so it does not make sense to organize voting through this platform because the results will not be reliable. If we should do voting, it should be on a blockchain with a pair of keys tied to a person's identity and the ability to verify each vote.

well if we look at that point you mentioned there would definitely be manipulation (but it wouldn't be that efficient) but many people would vote even if someone with a lot of money created a lot of fake accounts that person would probably not win in the end they would just be spending a lot of money unnecessarily

That possibility can happen to Twitter users because they can use many ways to win the vote.
Manipulation can also occur, but it depends on how the Oscar committee can handle the data and examine all suspected activity and will not approve the vote if it comes from spambots.
But voting from Twitter accounts can provide closeness between fans and nominees because each nominee must have their own fans.
I wonder if there is a prize for the Twitter users who have voted.

bot voting was one of my first thought when I heard that they were planning to have voting via Twitter. results will be extremely unreliable if a bookie decided to post odds for it. I hope bookies would leave it alone and let people compete or at least have fun on what "fan-favorite film" should win and not ruin it because a gambler decided they want to cheat by manipulating the result.

Anything is possible, but I'm pretty sure the overwhelming input that achieves a win at these sort of events is a select group of judges aka "critics" who decide based on their own experiences. While they might be influenced by such methods in a tiny way, it's going to be almost insignificant and if the film is more garbage than talent - it would be a huge waste of money for a highly uncertain outcome. I'm not sure what the going odds are on these sort of indie film inclusions, but you'd probably need a huge and sustained advertising budget to get the reach that you're trying to achieve. It's a nice idea and people can be influenced in such ways (aka Donald Trump), the price to do it would be much higher than the returns.

Am I the only one who expects this to be trolled by someone on 4chan with millions of multi botfarm accounts on twitter?

I like that they're expanding their options by introducing arbitrary end user nominations. But this is the internet and I suspect there is someone with the power to crash the results, who won't be able to resist doing so.

2021 wasn't the best year for movies that I remember. Things were so crazy with COVID I can't remember which films were good or bad in 2021.

Is it possible this user nomination feature might actually uncover a 2021 diamond in the rough, which most of us missed. I think it definitely has potential although they might have to take additional authentication steps to ensure that it won't be trolled.

Very much possible! We have digital marketing agencies available in the market who does such kind of activities at a dirt cheap price. So if some has place a bet of a million or two, he would leave no stone unturned to win the bet through whatever tactics possible.

These kind of public voting is a flawed system. Especially when it involves social media voting. It's very easy to manipulate and not correct. Just assume a film from Norway and a film from China is fighting for this position. China would flood with vites due to the sheer human population which Norway won't be able to do.

Before Oscar chose twitter they must have gone through all these thoughts and found that it's not easy to spam twitter with bots. Their API will be monitored and twitter has a specific time for different kinds of actions. If multiple accounts carry out many votes the system will definitely ban those accounts because their actions look like it's bot and many times the accounts will be subjected by twitter to verify if it's a bot or not. The only way to get out of this is by drip feeding the actions from time to time which will make it difficult for twitter to detect such malicious voting. Moreover, Twitter is more secured than other social medias like Instagram in terms of bot activities that's why Oscar may have chosen them for the Fan favorite Film voting.

The Bookmakers know how to balance the odds, so they will look at the bets and they will make sure that it reflects the probability that a specific movie might win, based on the bets that are placed.

So, will this be open to manipulation and exploitation... the answer in my opinion is YES! There will be an army of bots trying to boost their favorite.

Will we see a true reflection of a "Fan favorite" ... I guess not, because this will be a war of the bots to try and cheat the voting system.  ::)

There's a high possibility that the results will be manipulated. Nowadays, we all know up to what extent technology can do. Almost everything is possible with the help of technology and innovation. If the Oscar's would really resort to such voting, there's a big chance that they will get a controlled results because of bots and surge of multiple, new accounts just for the sake of voting. Wayback, facebook auto like is a thing and that was like year 2009. What more now that we are in much modern and advanced world. Maybe they could try to team up with twitter to filter the accounts that will tweet and vote. Then let twitter do its way to clean up and ban those multiple accounts that are mainly used for the sake of voting and trolling.

Regards to gambling, I think this method wouldn't be adopted by the casinos because it's really risky and there's so many loopholes. Anyone can take advantage and abuse it which could cause disruption of casino's ecosystem and loss of projected income.

I would also say that there is a possibility that it could be manipulated. If someone would bet huge amount and someone also found that bet plus the one who found out about the huge bet then manipulated the result then that would only make him/her lose the huge bet. If they don't want any manipulation then they should have their own platform for checking votes without using third party. IMO, it won't be manipulated. Using social media platform only makes the chance of getting manipulated very high.

such huge amount of bet will trigger such idea of creating bots the manipulate the voting system thereby making numerous votes or another option could be involving friends and colleagues getting them a cup of coffee and then instruct them on whom to vote once a bet is involved manipulation is bound to set in and since the bet staked is too high to lose odds would be put in place to ensure a positive outcome

I guess this won't be that easy to manipulate. You are unlikely to get thousands of fake tweets a day while on the other hand, films with real fans would definitely be active and post from their end & they are from around the world. Though, in theory, it's very possible to manipulate the prize, I doubt any house allows to place bets on such events until the first experiment.

While some casinos are offering bets on the Oscars I doubt they will offer a bet for something like this precisely because of the reasons that you are mentioning.

Something like this is completely open to manipulation and as such it is something that will be impossible to give precise odds to it, and if that is the case then it is better for the casino to stay away from this unless they plan to lose a lot of money with a bet like that.

If this is prone to cheating then why bet millions or why bet on a losing game? It doesn't matter whose bots are winning but the fact that it's being manipulated and cheated it's just the same as handling your money to someone with ease without the struggle of risking it. Although, we don't know what would they do to something like this since any social media voting is always prone to manipulation and I've seen it even on Facebook and Instagram.

And I don't think they will offer a betting to it since it's too easy to manipulate.

Actually this award was particularly created for the fans to solely decide. There will be no official judges or expert critics for this specific award except the fans themselves. This idea was originally being floated as Most Popular Film category years ago. But it wasn't implemented for certain reasons. So in lieu of that, this was the one implemented. But this Fan-Favorite Film is not a formal Oscars award category.

If this award actually goes to a film in a way that is without cheating and fake votes, it seems brilliant. There are indeed films that have captured the audience so much yet snubbed by the Academy. As written on the article I linked in the OP, movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home was a big hit and yet it only received a single nomination. That's almost none at all. If not with that single nomination, the cast would have no reason to go into the prestigious ceremony.

Anyway, I have seen odds on Oscars but I haven't yet seen one on this particular award. Probably because, as others have clearly thought, this is prone to abuse.

They are already teamed up with twitter by the time they do this and twitter know's what to do to minimize cheating. I think we cant compare twitter to facebook because in my opinion twitter is much stricter and they can control bots and other forms of abuse when compared to facebook but we don't know maybe facebook have improve their security now that are not new anymore. Oscars knows the risk and they think of that before they decided this idea but they have a trust with twitter.

Now, a gambling platform can do the same as well. They need to trust twitter with their voting system and all will be just fine and fair. I am excited for this.

I also liked this new voting that the organizers of the Oscars came up with.
 And if you really manage to set the appropriate filters for voting with the help of bots, then you can get a completely objective picture of the preferences of the audience and really choose the best film.
  The idea of ​​the organizers is also good because if such a "monster" as the Oscars copes with the task, it will be a good example for other creative competitions.
 And even for choosing the best casinos.

 I wonder if "Dune" or "The Matrix" will win?  Or maybe it will be the last James Bond?  I'm slightly intrigued. :)

I guess the Oscars know what they're doing and the risk would be up to bettors if they're willing to take it. Any social media platform could easily be manipulated and creating bots to tweet would only be easy but I'm sure that the Oscars would polish it. The organizers will surely do something about it.

If Oscars did really end up offering a betting with this award category, then they would probably allot focus and resources in weighing its success and fairness rate, right? Perhaps they have also thought of the susceptibility of this method to cheating and manipulation, and having some experts to monitor and control engagements could be the least they could do. I think Oscars is better than that, mindlessly starting a voting system that could go wrong.

Most bookmakers will avoid including these in their betting platform because they know how easy to manipulate the results on social media with bot accounts for very cheap price. Probably the academy will recognize the difficulty of being fair in such and may remove them in the future or just have it for the sake of troll or some fun.

Hacking something online is very easy, not for me or you but for hackers. Considering this flaw, the responsibility will be on Twitter, which we have seen in the past that it did not really have a good stance, we saw that Twitter got hacked in the past as well. Therefore considering this they can add a forum on Twitter or some other platform where users can sign up themselves for these things and at the end of the day, can be verified. But then again it's a very long shot and no one can trust that happening. Let's see how they make it harder for the potential hackers since abuse like this is really common.

Yes, it's not only possible, but also very likely. I doubt any bookmakers will introduce this betting category on their boards. Furthermore, to only allow Twitter users to vote is too restrictive. Theoretically by doing this, they want to know the public's opinion, but it is not going to work, because most people who are enthusiasts of movies aren't twitter users. The voting method should be wider, more accessible to everyone.

Manipulation for manipulation, oscars organizers could allow a poll on their official site where people would vote up to 20 times a day per IP...

In the way it's being done, it looks more like an orientated and privileged partnership in order to push up Twitter platform importance as main goal after all.

do you really think a certain group or organisation will go beyond the normal form of voting eyeing for possible new project? but anyway, we are in the digital age where anything and everything can happen with the miracle deployment of computers. so expect that twitter platform will crash at some point owed to this voting publicity. imagine, up to 20 tweets per day are allowed up until march 3. don't be surprised if your twitter feed will be full of those tweets and learn some of the top 2021 movies via twitter.  ;D

That would be the main problem for that cause we know it, there are lots of fake accounts on Twitter that will make the voting system corrupt if ever they gonna include it. I think they need to make a test first before they will include the real voting system to avoid technical problems like bots and other exploits that will ruin all the fun. We already know how they can easily create multiple accounts and make it seems like a legit person using in while in reality its just one of thousands accounts of a single person.

This is still exciting despite the probability that manipulation is possible. There are probably a number of popular films that will battle it out for this award. There is not only a single box office film that will probably win so easily over the others in terms of most fan favorite film.

But when it comes to betting I would rather hold my bet. The way it is being implemented is a little bit more susceptible to abuses than if it was offered not exclusively through Twitter.

You have a point. Despite having multiple accounts for the sake of voting, Twitter can easily suspend and even ban the accounts that they detected to be engaging in unusual activities. For instance, those accounts that are freshly made can be determined by the Twitter's system and erase them the moment they have proven it is for the voting and trolling. Although I've realized that there are so many accounts as well which are created years back that has gained several followers already and are the spare or extra account of other people in which they could sell for the voting of Oscar's. In this instance, the accounts established a credibility that it is an active account for months and years already, which I suppose would be hard for the Twitter's team to determine as bots or multiple account for the sake of voting. So for me, there's still a chance for the results to be manipulated in some ways. After all, the people are becoming smarter and wiser as time passes by, bypassing the known detected ways.

I believe Twitter has made improvements compared to what they were few years back, so this may not be such a bad idea for Oscars. Twitter is now more keen to unusual and extensive activities detection made from the accounts, and is much thorough when it comes to verification and such. But as per the peace of mind and assurance for the bettors, I think it would be wiser to observe for a while and after some time they could place bets if and only if they are really decided.

As soon as I read the title of the thread I was thinking the exact same thing. Twitter is not really known for being a secure platform where no manipulation can take place. They will limit the voting to one vote per account, but this is not going to prevent misuse. It's very easy to create a new Twitter accounts. Even adding a phone number is no real barrier for manipulation. With many new sim cards being sold very cheaply, it would be no problem to create a bunch of new accounts to vote for the movie. Same goes IP restrictions, with VPNs many votes could be made from one PC. The only problem if the Oscars remove a certain movie were they feel too many votes are generated by bots.

But will there be sportsbooks that will include the betting line for this twitter results? As of right now, only the usual categories (Best Actor, Best Director, etc) are included in the line-up, but haven't seen yet for the Fan-Favorite Film via Twitter money betting line. So we will see in the coming weeks if they will include this category.  Bookies may possibly check first the twitter pulse before they publish the candidates for this poll so they can also give appropriate odds per voted film.

The manipulation and hiring of those trolls and bots is very prone on this type of voting. So, I think that a casino that would get into this bet have already thought of this possibility.
Maybe a test run will do and they'll just limit the bettors on how much they can bet for this particular event. That will do the worry of manipulation and any bettor to rake those millions if possible ever.

Well, just like you, I haven’t seen the category Fan-Favorite Film in any sports book yet. It is reported to be included this year but I guess you are right that we’ll just have to see if this will really surfaced. Nonetheless, if they would really push this through, I hope that all goes well and they would prepare to counterattack any backlash and manipulation tactics.

For a very long time there has been a disconnect with what the public thinks it is a good movie and what the academy think it is a good movie.

So it is obvious this is an attempt by the academy to try to lower down that disconnect that people have with the academy, but personally I do not think this is going to be successful because as time has passed the award ceremony has gotten more and more boring to the point that almost anything is more entertaining than watching a bunch of millionaires giving themselves some awards among themselves.

That's right, and the Oscars team is probably fully aware of that. Hence this new way of getting the active participation and involvement of the audience and the general public.

The Oscars statistics in terms of viewers and public interest hasn't been encouraging for the past years. And I agree that the ceremony is getting boring. That's probably the number one reason why people are not interested. Who cares which award goes to whom?

I just hope this new innovation won't backfire especially because it is openly prone to abuse. And when gambling or money is involved, the flaws of the particular way this new award is to be won will definitely be exploited.

Well, there will always be a way that many will cheat, fortunately Twitter has the algorithm that detects accounts that are bots and this will help a lot to determine which movies are the ones that the masses actually want to win and/or be nominated for, there are many films that are good that I did not see nominated and to be honest there are a variety of films that I did not know were among the best, perhaps everything that has to do with the campaign of restrictions against covid has degenerated a lot of publicity.

This initiative will also create awareness about the film industry and what movies have been shown in the past year. Because, honestly, I am off-track about the list of movies. Maybe because it has been about couple of years that I haven't entered in a cinema. This award we will see also what is the current taste of movie fans. Because we are also evolving even in the film industry. So let us see what is the current type of film that the mass wants.

Lets see how this turns out, after all on the surface it may seem like a good idea but we know that a great deal of the twitter accounts out there are just bots, so someone could influence the results very easily and probably discourage the academy of doing this ever again.

And when we add economic interests, like being able to win a bet by directly manipulating the results, then things could get even more complicated as there is nothing stopping the people in charge of so many fake accounts to collude among themselves and make a killing in the process by winning this bet.

Below are the 10 short-listed films to be included in the oscar's fan-favorite film and you have up until Mar 3 to vote. So if you are a fan of one of these films, you can participate on this year's award as they are having a sweepstake here, and be the winner of a trip to the 95th Academy awards. Wonder if a bot will win, how it will go to the awards night.  ;D

https://i.imgur.com/eDo1Hn0.png
https://twitter.com/TheAcademy/status/1498444517724147712/photo/1

"Include #Sweepstakes in your #OscarsFanFavorite vote for a chance to win a trip to the 95th Academy Awards."

Has anybody found a betting site which is providing bettors odds at least for these top ten short-listed movies? The voting has almost come to an end and it seems this award is really not made available in various betting sites that I checked. I think even the betting platforms are wary for possible cheating.

If a bot will win in the sweepstakes, it is of course the bot owner who will go to the awards night. The more bots you have the more chances of winning.  ;D

:)
Good idea!
Bot experts are probably actively working on this topic. And there may be several of them who know and know how to break through the defenses. It will be fun when a couple of such "super bots" compete.
And Twitter devs are powerless, and have already launched a vote. Well, then the most super-duper "super bot" will win and, accordingly, the film that is promoted (maybe even for a fee :)) by the author of this super bot.
 :) :) :)

This is actually pretty cool (of course hoping that there is no interference by bots or anything else that would be cheating of course). I’m tired of movies (like Blow and Anchorman for example ) getting poor reviews from the “experts”, so it’ll be nice seeing a vote from the fans for once. I personally don’t think cheating will be an issue but we’ll see I suppose.

Yeah, I personally would love to see a voting category that would be based on a different perspective other than those who are usually being held to assess and judge the movies in receiving awards. If the management of Oscars would really permit such platform to be used, then is supposed they would do something to prevent any interference or cheating, right?

The participation of bots in the voting can only be excluded by a strict selection of participants for voting, for example, only confirmed Twitter accounts can be used. If bots vote, then such voting cannot be considered valid, and everyone is well aware of this.

How do you define "confirmed Twitter accounts"?

There are bots with lots of followers, and whose tweets and engagements with other accounts seem natural. It'll be hard to screen which is which for Twitter votes, hence it will be not wise to use fan favorites on gambling, as results will always be biased and manipulated to the core.

I would personally skip these types of events, and would just go directly to the normal lines instead. It's very hard to profit on these types of lines.

I mean the blue icon indicating that the account is authentic. No bot owner would be in the business of getting such badges so it would be a good solution to weed out bots in voting.

In fact I think Twitter is very centralized and censored so I wouldn't do such voting there at all. You need a completely decentralized platform for this kind of thing.

After this event, we will see if they are successful in handling this type of award in Oscars.
They will also see if it is worth to hold an award voted by the community.
As of now, I haven't seen any sportsbook giving a betting line for this fan-favorite film of the year via twitter.
Only the regular categories are included in the Oscars' betting lines.

If this is successful, how will you guys react? will you love it to continue this way or not? right now I'm seeing mixed opinions, some are interested with this type of voting but others are skeptical with it but to me, I can accept whatever will be the outcome. Even if we have a doubt, it was still nice to see that they are now taking the voting to the next level.

I guess the reason why most sportsbooks don't have it is because this was still new and they themselves are also confused if it's a good move to adopt it or not. They need to observe things first. Twitter being centralized can be a good thing because they can monitor fake accounts.

I think this is because bookmakers understand the possible risks if there are abuses by Twitter and voting participants. We will not see betting on this kind of events as it is not an easy task to analyze and set the odds.

I agree that this is just a completely new way of determining public opinion on which film deserves the highest award in the global film industry - the Oscar.  If other nominations have already existed for decades with virtually no changes, then such a vote is, of course, a new way to determine the winner, I think over the years it will take root and will exist.  
Because it is the development of information technology.

Most likely, the organizers have made some kind of protection against cheating, plus it is unlikely that any bookmaker will accept a huge bet, and then "do not notice" that the voting results are suspicious. So there is no chance to make money here.
What I'm wondering is, is there really no community that likes to joke (reddit, 2ch or whatever) organizes to make the voting results absurd just for fun?

You are contradicting yourself. How will you prevent abuse on a decentralized platform? Those who have the technical capacity to create millions of bots will win there. I think the best movie is the one that the audience votes for with their money/time - so the box office and the number of views should be the main indicators.

It will be even more interesting to watch how they will then deal with what result was screwed up by bots or some other tricky methods. And then there will be lawsuits. Who is right, who is wrong, and as a result, everyone will get so confused that you won’t understand at all who really is the main favorite of this vote. And how to be a bookmaker if someone disputes the winnings.
The bookmaker will have to somehow try to collect the money back.
This is unrealistic and will not work. In short, complete insanity.

This could either mean that people are not really interested in this kind of award to the point the casinos are not offering a bet on it, or they are so worried about the results being manipulated they cannot give accurate odds to this and as such they are refusing to offer the bet to the public.

Maybe if they see everything turns out fine this year and the award is also given next year then they could be interested on offering a bet during the next award ceremony.

But is there a casino/sportsbook which is including this category? I am seeing the usual categories but this twitter-based category is not yet included. Don't know if a crypto bookie will include this betting line anyway. Because they might not get enough attention to include this in their line-up. Twitter is a popular platform among millennials, so they can definitely get audience but for the betting line of this category, I don't think they can.

Bookmakers have no problem with this - according to the rules of service, all their decisions are final and the player agrees to this in advance. If there are any incomprehensible contradictory or suspicious situations, the bookmakers declare the events to be void and return bets with odds of 1.

I also haven't seen any bookies offering odds on the new twitter category yet. Maybe it's too early and they want to see how it plays out this year. I am sure that if this new category attracts enough attention its going to be a permanent new category for the Oscars. People are used to watching shorter shows these days, so watching a night of Academy Awards needs to find new ways to remain interesting, especially with covid pandemic reducing the number of good movies being released. I find this new category more interesting than the experts choosing their favourite. Bookies should pick up this new trend and include it in their odds, as long as the voting on twitter can't be manipulated.

Yeah.  This is clear. 
Here it is interesting what happens when it becomes clear that voting through Twitter is somehow rigged by bots or in some other way.  And then they will begin to figure out where the right legitimate votes are, and where these are bots.  And as a result, I think they will not be able to fully figure it out.  And it turns out that the film sort of won, but it seems like it didn’t.  And for his competitor as well. 

In short, there will be two great films worth watching.  Or even three. :)