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My wife made me do this....

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Ramma2

Member
tumblr_lx8vm7vs8B1r3gqwio1_500.jpg
 

Lambtron

Unconfirmed Member
You've gone around the world with your wife and she still can't seem to find happiness with you. I'm not voting out of spite for people like her. I hope you realize this one day before you go on a long, arduous quest to get your spine back.
Oh yeah, high five bro, you ain't never gonna let some WOMAN tell you what to do!
 
Just finishing up at work then I have a couple of errands to run. I'll update when I get home.

You've gone around the world with your wife and she still can't seem to find happiness with you. I'm not voting out of spite for people like her. I hope you realize this one day before you go on a long, arduous quest to get your spine back.

Wow you seem to know so many things about both me and my wife that neither one of us even knows. Tell me more, oh omniscient one!
 

daw840

Member
I went ahead and liked both the pic and the site. I did it on my lunch a couple of hours ago so I hope it counted.
 
Ok… time for the fun stuff!

As far as the contest goes nothing is official until the winner is announced on the radio tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure we got this.

I promised y'all an update on the craziness of this weekend so here goes. Also gaf: PLEASE DO NOT GO ON THE THINK KITCHENS PAGE OR THE 2ND PLACE PEOPLES WALL AND START POSTING COMMENTS REGARDING WHAT I’M ABOUT TO DISCLOSE TO YOU. K? We are trying to keep things classy and we don’t want to look like assholes in victory. Thanks, appreciate it.

I don't even fucking know where to begin, and I know this post will probably be a big sloppy mess. I’ve been up for the past 72 hours straight living off adrenaline, coffee and cigarettes, so let's just start with some screenshots and go from there. This is going to be a long post, so the didn'treadlol crowd might want to beat it now.

Now take a look at these facebook profiles and tell me if you don't notice anything funny.
Pay particular attention to the profile pics, and the activity: HINT- the pages that these profiles liked as well as the exact time that they liked these pages.

bennybradley165431.jpg


Benny Bradley: http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?
id=100003474301580&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970

spencerhudson165419.jpg


Spencer Hudson :http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003456473169&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970

cecileuragafb165535.jpg


Cecile Uragafb: http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003391202255&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970

juanitaschmidt165545.jpg

Juanita Schmidt: http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003457161419&ref=pb&__user=100003728482970

edwardgeorge170227.jpg


Edward George: http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003320771501&ref=pb&__user=100003766313111

christopherjoseph170236.jpg


Christopher Joseph: http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003333040748&ref=pb&__user=100003766313111

Etc. etc. etc.

annalellaodkb164508.jpg


tomameehanf164530.jpg


georgehiram170900.jpg


logandevin170849.jpg


Since this past Friday night I documented and archived over 550 facebook accounts just like these, that voted for the Williams kitchen just over this past weekend.

Here is how it all went down.

On Friday morning I woke up and checked the status of the contest. The Williams had 908 votes and we had 1,558. We were leading by almost 650 votes with only 3 days left to go.

We figured that we pretty much had it in the bag and that we could just coast until the end of the contest. I mean, it's pretty much impossible to get 650 people to legitimately vote for you over a weekend after you've already exhausted your family, friends, friends of friends, etc. Right?

But something very odd was posted that caught my attention.
I was reading the comments on the Williams' photo on Friday and noticed that she posted "we were in the lead forever but it's been a struggle to keep up. Keep your fingers crossed :)"

Kind of an odd comment for someone facing an insurmountable deficit with a very short time left to go, no? This struck me as suspicious and led me to believe that she was up to something, so I started obsessively monitoring the activity on their photo.

So Friday night rolls around and I'm out with some bros. I am checking the Williams' votes in a very OCD manner, refreshing like every 5 or 10 minutes on my iphone. Here's where shit got cray.

I check at 1:40am and they are still at 908. I refresh the page at 1:45am and my jaw dropped when I saw that they jumped from 908 to 1,081 in the 5 minutes since I last refreshed. A jump of 173 votes in a 5 minute timespan? Oh fuck no.

I immediately rushed home and got right on the computer, and started looking into who these 173 mystery voters were. I uncovered a gold mine.

Not only did I find several accounts with identical profile pictures but different names and locations, but here was the real kicker: every single one of these 173 voters liked Think Kitchens, the Williams Kitchen and the same 5 or so other pages at the exact same time, precisely to the minute at 1:42am

It would be literally impossible for 173 microworkers to like 5 pages all at exactly the same time. This could only mean one thing: these likes were all computer generated!

I spent the entire night copying and pasting the links to these profiles and screenshotting each one just in case tracks were going to be covered.

This happened several more times over the weekend. Here is a Timeline:

Friday night/Saturday morning at 1:42am: Jump from 908 to 1081 – a leap of 173 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan.

Saturday morning at 8:45am: Jump from 1,081 to 1,187 – a leap of 106 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan

Saturday night/Sunday Morning at 1:41am: Jump from 1,187 to 1,362 – a leap of 175 votes in a 1-2 minute timespan

By Sunday morning, that 650 vote lead that we started the weekend with, had been reduced to less than 200. A couple of more attacks from that computer vote-spammer and we would lose.

I spent the entire weekend frantically documenting all of the evidence. Copying the links to the profiles, organizing profiles with identical photos, screen-shotting profiles and so on. Didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, just archived evidence.

By Sunday morning I had recorded over 550 fake computer generated facebook accounts, links and screenshots that had voted for the Williams at exactly the same time depending on the batch.

I decided to go a step further in my evidence gathering, and managed to discover the specific company that they bought likes from.

I did this by clicking on the facebook page of one of the artists that these computer-generated spam votes were liking and contacting the owner of the page. I made up a contrived story about how I am starting a business in Canada and asked if he could share a link to the company that he bought likes from. Have a look below:

palangi.png


I then contacted Turia Media trying to get direct confirmation from them that the Williams did indeed buy likes from their company. I was emailed back and the person didn’t deny it, but made some sort of vague statement saying “Could you please send me a link to the specific one you’re referring to? We work with a very large amount of people, so I don’t remember every individual one!”

I sent him the link and he never replied back after that (still hasn't). Shortly after, I noticed that clicking on the links of a few of the fake profiles that were working perfectly fine before; would start re-directing to weird places and couple even re-directed to a photo of our kitchen! What the fucking fuck?

Once I had gathered overwhelming and crushing evidence, certain people were contacted and certain events transpired which I won’t discuss since this forum is open to the public, but let’s just say it doesn’t matter at this point anyways because we ended up with the most votes when the contest ended anyways xD

Alright I'm about to go fuck off and celebrate, maybe catch some much needed sleep. Talk to y'all tomorrow.
 

nib95

Banned
Fucking amazing. OP is Sherlock! GAF beats cheaters! Hope FB shuts down this company's options, finds a way around these bots and fucks his shit up.

Keep us posted!
 
List updated.

Added: acksman, Egnirys, Lambtron, JABEE, Hellsing321, underkanter, the walrus, ink4n3. LeleSocho. Megasoum, Triple Nickel, InfiniteNine, Daw840 and fixed the spelling for you Jasconius.

So unless I missed anyone, it looks like this will be the final list.

With a narrow victory of a 160ish votes and 261 total votes from gaf, gaf really made a huge difference here. Things would have gotten extremely messy had the contest ended with us behind and overwhelming evidence of fraud on the part of the other people (lawyers were even consulted to deal with the possibility of this). So glad the contest ended this way and that it didn't have to come to that.

Winner gets announced on the hour.
 
Will the fraudsters get investigated?

Very sleazy.

As long as we win then no, I don't think they will be investigated.

We would have no reason to pursue it further and the company has a business to run, so there is no reason for them to burn bridges with potential future clients.

It took everything in me to resist the urge to expose them in front of their friends, family and the other contestants but I'll just take satisfaction in the fact that they wasted their money on buying votes, cheated and lost anyway.
 

Maddog

Member
As long as we win then no, I don't think they will be investigated.

We would have no reason to pursue it further and the company has a business to run, so there is no reason for them to burn bridges with potential future clients.

It took everything in me to resist the urge to expose them in front of their friends, family and the other contestants but I'll just take satisfaction in the fact that they wasted their money on buying votes, cheated and lost anyway.

Can you estimate how much it cost them?
 
Can you estimate how much it cost them?

That website advertises that they sell packages of 500-1000 likes for $49 USD. I don't know if they paid extra to arrange for them to all be delivered over a span of 3 days. They also had to customize their order to arrange for the bots to like both the company page and their photo, so i have no idea how much they ended up paying.
 

nicoga3000

Saint Nic
Holy ass - you guys won? That's fantastic - congrats! And A+ to buying "likes". It blows me away what shit has come to these days, ha. At least they got shafted in the end!
 

Koomaster

Member
$50 is kind of cheap. Not sure why if they were going to cheat they didn't just go all in; especially with a new kitchen at stake?
 
It took everything in me to resist the urge to expose them in front of their friends, family and the other contestants but I'll just take satisfaction in the fact that they wasted their money on buying votes, cheated and lost anyway.

I still might have a laugh with some people about it :p

Oh, and congrats!


$50 is kind of cheap. Not sure why if they were going to cheat they didn't just go all in; especially with a new kitchen at stake?

Throwing good money after bad?
 

Vagabundo

Member
As long as we win then no, I don't think they will be investigated.

We would have no reason to pursue it further and the company has a business to run, so there is no reason for them to burn bridges with potential future clients.

It took everything in me to resist the urge to expose them in front of their friends, family and the other contestants but I'll just take satisfaction in the fact that they wasted their money on buying votes, cheated and lost anyway.

And you're victory will taste all the sweeter for it too.

At least they are out, maybe, a hundred quid. I would have loved to see their faces when they learned they'd been exposed.
 

Megasoum

Banned
Woot!! Congrats!

And this is the message on Facebook:

The winner of our UGLY KITCHEN CONTEST was just announced on Live 105 Radio - Congratulations to Yesir Alamin for winning the $15,0000 Kitchen Makeover. Thank you again to all the participants for sharing your ugly kitchen photos. Stay tuned for a brand new contest in the Fall. :0)

Hmm...is a Facebook status legally binding? A 150 000$ kitchen must be crazy lol.
 

Koomaster

Member
Throwing good money after bad?
If they've already decided to cheat, might as well go whole hog is my point. In for a penny, in for a pound, et cetera. It's the off chance that a small company might not even care to investigate cheating to the degree the OP did.

Anyway congrats OP!
 
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