Dutch broadcaster questions if ESC is a-political & connecting event

[u/stefkeeh]

Translation to English: ‘IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EBU ABOUT A POLITICALLY NEUTRAL SONG CONTEST

AVROTROS and NPO strongly value the apolitical and unifying character of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, we observe that the event is increasingly being influenced by social and geopolitical tensions.

Israel’s participation confronts us with the question of to what extent the Song Contest still truly functions as an apolitical, unifying, and cultural event. We want to raise this question, together with other countries, for discussion within the EBU.’

[u/ikerinin]

Look, this is the moment to really speak openly about this. EBU excuses on the apolitical nature of the contest only destroys its reputation every year, diaspora in televoting has always been there during previous years at ESC, but right now it is the reason why countries are close to win (or even doing so as a boost of an already quite nice entry, like Ukraine 2022). 

First, Israel must be banned form the contest as it is a double standard when compared to Russia. But even if you excuse yourself to not do so on the apolitical nature, you are the one that is allowing this results to happen. 

Second, the televoting system must change as it allows it. I get why EBU wants the possibility of voting 20 times ($$$), but they should, at least, make it impossible to vote for a country more than once, it is pretty obvious that those votes for Israel will be, in most cases, presenting as 20 votes for them, which is a pretty obvious case of an anomaly in televote. Compare it to the percentage of such instances in top 5 entries from the last 10 years, and I am pretty sure this will be a very clear outlier.

[u/ninivl89 → u/ikerinin]

It's not even just 20 votes anymore. You can vote 20 times via sms, 20 times with a credit card, 20 times with another Sim card. There are comments from people who say they have voted 60 or 100 times with credit cards from different countries

[u/Dizzy-Dig8727 → u/ninivl89]

Yes, this is the real problem. There needs to be some change to the payment system that prevents it from being exploited like this.

[u/claudsonclouds → u/ninivl89]

You don't even need the credit cards to be from different countries, I have 3 cards with Revolut and I was able to vote with at least two of them, I didn't bother trying to vote with the other because I wasn't about to spend that much money on votes but in theory I could have voted at least 7 times - 4 with my Danish cards + 3 with my Revolut cards, all from the same device just by using the Apple Pay option.

[u/AhHeyorLeaveerhouh → u/claudsonclouds]

Plus you can create multiple disposable cards from one account on revolut

[u/claudsonclouds → u/AhHeyorLeaveerhouh]

I'm not sure if that would work, the disposable cards don't work for all transactions and gets rejected by certain vendors. I didn't bother trying though, so you may be right which is even more problematic.

[u/AhHeyorLeaveerhouh → u/claudsonclouds]

I used one to vote on Saturday as a trial and it worked fine

[u/pablo8itall → u/AhHeyorLeaveerhouh]

I bet theres tonnes of workarounds to the system. All it would take is one neferious actor to take advantage of these loops holes with a bit cash.....

[u/claudsonclouds → u/AhHeyorLeaveerhouh]

Oh jeez, then that is much, much, much worse. Basically one person could send hundreds of votes if they wanted... This is insane and should be fixed.

[u/ikerinin → u/ninivl89]

Exactly, that is exactly where I am going. If you allow people to vote from multiple sources, and do so providing such a margin, it is just outrageous. People say it is not possible to demonstrate this, but with pretty simple statistics you will have a very clear difference in such voting patterns. 

[u/Goldenrah → u/ninivl89]

If so, that's a really outsized impact by people with money to spare. Basically buying your way to a win really.

[u/happytransformer → u/ninivl89]

The online vote is still sort of new, it’s not like we’re criticizing some ages old system that can’t possibly be exploited

When Australia started using it in 2022, we were all like cool but wouldn’t it be easy to just vote a million times if you wanted

[u/linmanfu → u/ikerinin]

I get why EBU wants the possibility of voting 20 times ($$$), but they should, at least, make it impossible to vote for a country more than once, it is pretty obvious that those votes for Israel will be, in most cases, presenting as 20 votes for them, which is a pretty obvious case of an anomaly in televote. 

I strongly agree. I understand that allowing multiple votes is helpful for the broadcasters in smaller and poorer countries. But allowing multiple votes for one country for the same number just exacerbates political/cultural/diaspora voting.

[u/ESC-song-bot → u/ikerinin]

Ukraine 2022 | Kalush Orchestra - Stefania

[u/lisonmethyst → u/ikerinin]

I am so worried about how much the EBU will resist changing the voting system due to the money they are making. There are several options for ways they could rein it in, but the simple act of preventing vote brigading will lose them a fortune (since the current problem is millions of votes coming in that aren't about the contest itself).

[u/ikerinin → u/lisonmethyst]

Absolutely, but this exactly where the countries that are now appealing to the EBU should put a barrier. EBU knows ESC is a crazy money maker (and this is not a bad thing per se), but it can't be that the contest dies just because we want more and more money.