The Russian state television has scrapped the results of a local version of the talent show The Voice Kids. Research shows that bots have been used to influence the result. That is why the final must be repeated.
There was a stir last month about the result of the talent show. The daughter of pop star Alsou and the Azerbaijani millionaire and businessman Jan Abramov won by a vast majority, although many commentators thought her rivals were better.
The young winner received more than 56 percent of the votes via telephone calls and text messages. Viewers were also surprised when she heard that 11-year-old Mikella Abramova won the sixth season of the Russian The Voice Kids.
Experts from Group-IB subsequently examined the voting process. The results of that investigation were worrying enough to declare the result invalid. A strikingly large number of votes would have been cast per SMS for one of the candidates.
Around 300 numbers sent more than 8,000 text messages from the same region. The used telephones are now out of use. It also seems that bots, computer programs that can perform human tasks, have been used to call tens of thousands of times.
The outcome of the investigation has also led to hilarity in Russia. “We have learned that there are no fair elections in Russia,” concluded the famous blogger StalinGulag.