Illegitimate Liberty: Protecting Online Polls

The purpose of a poll is simple: learn about the interests of your audience. Whether you’re a politician campaigning for election, a multinational entertainment brand or a respected news organization, knowing what your audience is thinking is invaluable. For example, the CNN poll below asked its audience who they think won a recent democratic debate. The information provided allowed CNN’s editors to both display and form a narrative around the current Presidential election. On top of this, a poll allows users to see how their opinion stacks up with other users in their online community.

While the convenience of Internet polls is evident, the anonymity that comes with them should have organizations asking an important question: how reliable are they at reflecting genuine opinion? With FunCaptcha — very.

Accuracy is king

A news organization’s reputation goes hand-in-hand with the accuracy of the information they relay. If a news outlet consistently provides inaccurate information, they will soon find themselves losing their audience. Online polls are no different — the threat of bots swarming a poll (or petition, in Uber’s case) and distorting the data is very real. By blocking these bots, FunCaptcha can ensure that only genuine humans are engaging with their polls and thus, ensure the accuracy of their data.

Legitimacy is longevity

If polls are accurate and authentic, those who participate in them feel as though their opinion has contributed to a wider discussion. If a poll is swarmed with bots, false votes and muddled data, this leads to genuine participants feeling dissatisfied about their contribution. People don’t want to feel as though their input has been wasted. If a brand can’t garner genuine audience engagement, their polls are meaningless and the brand itself is thrown aside as unreliable. For news organizations especially — it’s a death sentence.

High Conversion, Better Engagement

Maintaining both the accuracy and legitimacy of an online brand’s poll is crucial — but in the past, the only way to do this was with outdated and vulnerable CAPTCHAs.

Online polls are a valuable resource and FunCaptcha allows them to stay that way.