Baeksang Arts Awards has been embroiled in allegations of manipulation of the popularity award voting, but through an official statement said there were no signs of fraudulent voting.
Earlier, from the 23rd the voting for the 61st Baeksang Arts Awards (hereafter "Baeksang") PRIZM popularity award took place. For the broadcasting-institutional sector and film-institutional sector candidates, 35 men and 35 women were selected as popularity award nominees, and the man and woman with the most votes each receive the PRIZM popularity award.
But after the voting began, allegations of fraudulent voting surfaced on online communities. Claims were raised that the unusually high vote counts for Kim Hye-yoon, Hyeri and IU, who were ranking at the top among the female popularity award nominees, suggested manipulation using macro programs.
With two days left before the end of voting, Kim Hye-yoon, Hyeri and IU were the only nominees across men and women to exceed 3 million votes, drawing attention. As of 2:30 p.m. on the 30th, Kim Hye-yoon was first with about 5.6 million votes. Compared with other candidates who had at most around 30,000 votes, it was an overwhelming difference. Furthermore, in the male popularity award, only the leader Byeon Wooseok exceeded 1 million votes, while second and third place Park Bo-gum and Jung Haein had only 510,000 votes and 150,000 votes respectively. Total votes were also about five times different, with 2.87 million votes for the male popularity award and 14.44 million votes for the female popularity award.
In principle, the popularity award allows up to four free votes per day per account registered on the PRIZM app, and voting rights are reissued at midnight each day. By sharing the voting certificate page once, you can gain two additional votes. One-time email addresses and unrestricted Google Mail sign-ups are blocked, so it is difficult for one person to create multiple accounts to vote multiple times. Nevertheless, because certain candidates surpassed 1 million votes in just two days showing abnormal trends, macro suspicions naturally grew.
In particular, on the 26th a video showing manipulation of Hyeri's vote count using a macro program spread, fueling the controversy, and some argued that Kim Hye-yoon, IU and Hyeri, suspected of fraudulent voting, should all be excluded from the list of winners.
Meanwhile, PRIZM, which is conducting the voting, posted a notice of popularity voting operation policy on its official account on the 29th to explain the macro suspicions. PRIZM said, "We place the highest value on the fairness and reliability of the Baeksang Arts Awards popularity voting and strictly apply the following operating policies," adding, "Our basic principle is operation allowing four votes per day per registered ID per popularity award category (excluding additional voting rights granted by certificate sharing and event participation). The system is designed to restrict registration for unfair methods such as macro use or repeated creation of email accounts to vote. For macro patterns that the system cannot block at the source, after collecting data for a certain period we automatically analyze it and operate so that all accounts are automatically blocked."
It added, "The 'macro suspicion video' being shared in communities has been confirmed to be an edited video in which the playback speed of a recorded video, not the voting page, was artificially increased, and watching less than 10 seconds of an advertisement does not count as a vote. We have not found any signs of technical hacking or macros enabling more than four votes per day per ID per popularity award category (excluding votes granted by certificate sharing and event participation), or fast-forwarding advertisement videos."
It also emphasized that fraudulent voting is impossible, saying, "When multiple new accounts are created from the same IP and used for voting, technical protections apply to block logins and further restrict account creation after a certain number of requests. Using web fingerprinting, the system is configured to block at the firewall level when the same user repeatedly requests sign-up/login in a short time. Ads shown during voting are blocked from being terminated midway by an encrypted token TTL check technology. During member registration, email verification codes use a random image authentication code system to provide macro automatic registration blocking."
It continued, "PRIZM recognizes the concerns raised about macro voting more seriously and is strengthening its response system. During the remaining period until the voting deadline (May 2), we will further strengthen operating policies to prevent even the slightest unfair voting such as macros, and operate a stricter vote tabulation process. We will also conduct precise analysis of past voting data and invalidate any votes in which even a slight technical macro suspicion is found," adding, "We will do our best to create a more fair and reliable voting environment and make every effort to ensure each fan's valuable voice and participation are respected."
Meanwhile, voting for the 61st Baeksang Arts Awards PRIZM popularity award runs until 4 p.m. on May 2. The 61st Baeksang Arts Awards will be hosted by Shin Dong-yup, Suzy and Park Bo-gum and will be held at 8 p.m. on May 5 at COEX Hall D in Seoul.
[Photo] OSEN DB, Baeksang Arts Awards
[OSEN]