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Telegram created Belarus language public channel. And posted poll to vote for new president with some clever restrictions. Anyone can vote, but you can't choo

Telegram created Belarus language public channel. And posted poll to vote for new president with some clever restrictions. Anyone can vote, but you can't choose options with candidates if your phone number is not Balarusian. "I am not from Belarus" is only available poll option to make your vote if your phone number is not Balarusian. There is currently 736'000 votes with that option. Telegram poll https://t.me/s/telegrambelarus/9 https://t.me/s/telegrambelarus/9 In Belarus there is only 7.8 million eligible voters. Poll shows that 1,184 million choose to vote for new president Tikhanovskaya. Only 85'000 votes for current president Lukashenko. While official results is 80% for current, 7% for new, with 40% participation. This is obviously mind blowing picture for citizens.

HPsquared 6y ago
To be fair though, Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample.
- huhtenberg 6y ago
  2.3M voted in a poll, 59% from Belorussian phone numbers. That's 1.36 M or 17% of the eligible voter pool. 51% of these are for the secondary candidate. This doesn't reconcile with the official numbers regardless of how you massage them.
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's good people have a way to communicate beyond the reach of the authorities ... ... but doesn't really matter how big the poll sample was if the sample was not representative - the results don't have a lot of meaning. And it's pretty fair to say it was not representative. In fact, you don't even need remotely that size of a sample if the sample is representative. Polling is not about sample size, it's about the quality of the sample.
    - kolinko 6y ago
      Even in the worst case scenario, where each and every opposition voter took part in the poll, and literally everyone else voted for Lukashenko, this still prpves that the true result was at least 17% for opposition, which is more than the official results claim.
      - jariel 6y ago
        Teenagers don't have phones? Did all the eligible voters who phone-polled actually vote? Did they poll the way they actually voted? Some people don't have two phones? Can we trust that telegram doesn't have a flaw in the means by which it is measured? (i.e. register again with the same SIM, or something like that?) It's nice that there is a phone number as validation, but this doesn't 'prove' anything. Edit: I should add, apparently people are registering photos of their votes, which don't jibe with the tally, which is probably a much better indication of problems with voting [1] [1] https://belarus2020.org/ https://belarus2020.org/
        pixelbash 6y ago
        I can't tell if you are arguing that the original vote was less likely to be skewed than this one, or just that this one doesn't pass the highest bar that could be set for it.
        jariel 6y ago
        I'm arguing it's an 'online poll' and subject to all sorts of possible issues. It's probably a decent indication of what seems to be some otherwise obvious fraud at the polls, it's just not 'proof' of anything really.
        dtech 6y ago
        With these numbers, there would need to be significant effort to fraud the Telegram poll. For no real benefit other than maybe propaganda. Whom exactly benefits from that? It would have to be a nation-state, and they weren't exactly doing much about the situation before the "election". What is more likely: that the existing dictator and his supporters made defrauded the election to keep power or that some unknown entity defrauded an Telegram poll for not much gain. Unless Telegram poll's system was completely broken, but you'd expect other large polls to already have revealed that.
  - d0mine 6y ago
    Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million people" The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.html https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...
    - nordsieck 6y ago
      > The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness That's true for "reasonable" poll sizes. As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does begin to guarantee correctness. An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters.
      - dstick 6y ago
        Yeah I think Telegram, like Whatsapp, is adopted broadly enough not to bias too heavily in one direction. Definitely not 90%, and especially not if that “bias” matches the word on the street.
        kube-system 6y ago
        Telegram? 5% of the world uses Telegram. And I bet the 50+ age demographic is heavily underrepresented in that subset. Significant sample bias shows up in US polling using mediums that are exponentially more widespread. Nonetheless, I don't doubt the validity of these particular results, because I think we have enough corroborating evidence. We don't have to justify the rigorousness of a Telegram poll to come to that same conclusion.
        tripzilch 6y ago
        People in different parts of the world differ HUGELY in what instant-messaging communications platform they use. For instance people in the US still use text-messaging to a significant percentage. That's hard for me to believe as well. It's no use looking at Telegram's world usage, that's for sure.
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    Same story when people predicted Hillary’s chances 99.9% based of Twitter polls. Your sample selection gives misleading predictions too easily.
    - _dark_matter_ 6y ago
      That is not what the OP is saying. They are indicating _not_ that the oppo party would win, but that the party in power is clearly lying about the results. If they are lying, then that calls for a new election.
- jetzzz 6y ago
  Official election results give Tikhanovskaya 500k votes, Telegram poll - 1M votes, 2x more.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    Ah I see, so there's no extrapolation involved, only the raw numbers.
  - _-david-_ 6y ago
    We don't know how many people who voted in the Telegram poll actually voted. Maybe only a quarter of the people in the Telegram poll actually voted. Its possible that some of the people in the Telegram poll are not eligible to vote (due to age or whatever). There could be other issues like people changing who they voted for in the election after previously voting in Telegram.
    - safog 6y ago
      It's a fair point, not sure why there are downvotes. I still think it's extremely likely that the official numbers are bogus but you can't really accept the Telegram numbers as truth either.
      - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
        "Official" figures have no ground in the reality. A crowdfunded campaign to check election results just produced a report, details are published in https://partizan-results.com/ https://partizan-results.com/ People behind this campaign are starting to reveal their names at last. I know personally one of them. My network says others are highly respectable as well.
    - BTCOG 6y ago
      Well, maybe that's simple enough to explain. Maybe scared citizens don't want to go and publicly vote for fear they're going to get the shit kicked out of them?
      - 6y ago
- MrVitaliy 6y ago
  There is no faith that the official polls use less bias data, or any data, really.
  - phre4k 6y ago
    There is no faith that the Telegram polls use less bias data, or any data, really.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  > Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample It's not quite a Telegram problem, voters in a protest poll are not an unbiased sample. This is why elections where one side denies the legitimacy of an election "invalid," in the "we all accept the results" sense. Call it it petition, protest or public declaration. In that regard,the numbers are meaningful.
- sulam 6y ago
  Just keep in mind that the few non-governmental election monitors all had Lukashenko with less than 20% of the vote. This is not an isolated result.
- dmix 6y ago
  It's like using Reddit upvotes for a measure of American politics. They have a massive audience but Ron Paul and Bernie still weren't anywhere near the presidency.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
why would that blow someone's mind? Obviously if you're on an "anti" communication channel with a revolutionary mindset of course the majority will be overwhelmingly high against the dictator. That's by definition what they are revolting against.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Even allowing for the fact some Belarusians have multiple mobile phone numbers, as do some people who aren't eligible to vote for perfectly normal reasons, it's quite telling that somebody polled twice as many votes on a communication channel compared with the official 'count'.
  - xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
    What about those who are underage? There's a surely a large internet-savy base with phone numbers who would otherwise be unable to vote.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      Underage people and foreigners are in the 'unable to vote for perfectly normal reasons' bracket. Extrapolating from census figures, you'd need pretty much every single person in the 13-17 age range to vote Tikhanovskaya to make up the disparity between Telegram and official tallies though. And if she got literally every teenager in the country to register a protest vote on a web app, there's a sneaking suspicion she might actually have got more than her 10% official tally with the adults too...
- damnyou 6y ago
  Forget percentages, even the raw numbers show a mismatch between official and Telegram results.
curiousllama 6y ago
Wow. For context, there are less than 10M people total in Belarus, and ~16% of the population is under age 15. In order for the numbers to tally, the protests would necessarily have to be made up (almost) entirely of children. https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html
aprdm 6y ago
Is it possible to consider that either Telegram has a vested interest on it or someone can easily obtain a telephone number in Belarus and hack the results?
contravariant 6y ago
Just in case anyone is wondering. The 'official' vote count for Thikhanovskaya is 588,622. So regardless of how unbiased a sample it may be the Telegram poll shows over 2x as many people (or phone numbers to be exact), willing to vote for Thikhanovskaya (at the time of writing). Use this information as you wish.
- tomp 6y ago
  How many of these "phone numbers" aren't eligible voters though (e.g. under 18)?
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Who knows. And there are tons of such effects that bias the result in every possible direction. That's why I called upon people to use heir own judgement.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- crondung 6y ago
  That's cool and all, except everyone in that country had 2 sim cards with 2 numbers. They don't have free long distance over there, nor are plans for cheap text+data the same plans as cheap calls. So I take this information to mean this poll was useless. Everyone who voted could vote twice, and felons and kids voted too.
  - schmorptron 6y ago
    Wait, how is felons voting a bad thing?
    - atoav 6y ago
      Probably from the US, they didn't sign the human rights treaty and are a bit.. underdeveloped at that front.
severino 6y ago
This is great, maybe we can use Telegram for the actual election, because if we're absolutely sure that this poll is clean and we use it to ask for a new election, why don't we just take the results officially? If we don't, well, maybe we should make no assumptions about the results either.
Thorentis 6y ago
Sounds like a great INFOOP opportunity by a foreign power to further sow discontent.
moltar 6y ago
The problem with that approach is that it’s clearly biased towards the younger generations who are tech savvy. But it’s mostly the older people who would’ve voted for Luk. Note, I don’t support Luk in anyway, just pointing out the bias. Altho it does uncover the fact that the results are fabricated. But it’s not like anyone was doubting that anyways.
- loxs 6y ago
  Come on... I don't believe this. My whole extended family below 90 is using actively some varying portion of these: Viber (most used), WhatsApp, Facebook messenger. They are mostly spread in Turkey, Bulgaria and (to a lesser extend) the rest of Europe and some in the US. Grandmas use Viber regularly to share pics of their great-grandchildren with their first cousins (other grandmas). They send holiday wishes, news etc. And my people are not better educated compared to the rest of our part of the world. Everyone is very engaged with politics (mostly for or against Erdogan). I don't believe Belarus is any different. Yeah, younger people are probably more likely to vote in such a thing, still, I don't think the bias is huge.
  - moltar 6y ago
    I’m from Eastern Europe myself. Yes older folks have accounts, but they aren’t active users. They wouldn’t join groups. They wouldn’t vote in the app. My parents in law are a testament to that. They too have all of those apps, yet they can’t even tell the difference between WhatsApp and Viber. We ask them to call us on WhatsApp and they’ll try to call on viber or Skype and then wonder why we are not answering and if there’s anything wrong with us :)
    - loxs 6y ago
      Maybe not the 85-90 year olds, but 65-70 year olds (my parents) are very politically active.
maqp 6y ago
"Poll shows that 1,184 million choose to vote for new president Tikhanovskaya." It is possible that Telegram is being impartial and providing more honest statistics wrt. what the citizens want. But it's also the case the results are unverifiable data broadcasted from Telegram's server over TLS-equivalent connection. MITM attack of client-server encryption, as well as compromise of the server broadcasting the results allow the attacker to alter the voting results. People acting on those results will allow Telegram to bypass democratic processes. Not saying Belarus is a democracy, but if this sets a precedent it will turn Telegram into a tool of political power, and power, as always, will corrupt. Even if Durov's team is being fair and honest (which I find unlikely considering Durov is yet another Russian oligarch who made their money spying on VKontakte users), they're also useful fools creating yet another architecture with centralized control over user data.
- diimdeep 6y ago
  Russian oligarch is very specific term[1], due to his age, Durov is missed time frame by 20 years to become one. Durov is Internet entrepreneur that is forced to become political expat, that's on the opposite spectrum from russian oligarch, like self made tech entrepreneur vs oil magnate trough inheritance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch

HPsquared 6y ago

To be fair though, Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample.

huhtenberg 6y ago
2.3M voted in a poll, 59% from Belorussian phone numbers. That's 1.36 M or 17% of the eligible voter pool. 51% of these are for the secondary candidate. This doesn't reconcile with the official numbers regardless of how you massage them.
- jariel 6y ago
  It's good people have a way to communicate beyond the reach of the authorities ... ... but doesn't really matter how big the poll sample was if the sample was not representative - the results don't have a lot of meaning. And it's pretty fair to say it was not representative. In fact, you don't even need remotely that size of a sample if the sample is representative. Polling is not about sample size, it's about the quality of the sample.
  - kolinko 6y ago
    Even in the worst case scenario, where each and every opposition voter took part in the poll, and literally everyone else voted for Lukashenko, this still prpves that the true result was at least 17% for opposition, which is more than the official results claim.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Teenagers don't have phones? Did all the eligible voters who phone-polled actually vote? Did they poll the way they actually voted? Some people don't have two phones? Can we trust that telegram doesn't have a flaw in the means by which it is measured? (i.e. register again with the same SIM, or something like that?) It's nice that there is a phone number as validation, but this doesn't 'prove' anything. Edit: I should add, apparently people are registering photos of their votes, which don't jibe with the tally, which is probably a much better indication of problems with voting [1] [1] https://belarus2020.org/ https://belarus2020.org/
      - pixelbash 6y ago
        I can't tell if you are arguing that the original vote was less likely to be skewed than this one, or just that this one doesn't pass the highest bar that could be set for it.
        jariel 6y ago
        I'm arguing it's an 'online poll' and subject to all sorts of possible issues. It's probably a decent indication of what seems to be some otherwise obvious fraud at the polls, it's just not 'proof' of anything really.
      - dtech 6y ago
        With these numbers, there would need to be significant effort to fraud the Telegram poll. For no real benefit other than maybe propaganda. Whom exactly benefits from that? It would have to be a nation-state, and they weren't exactly doing much about the situation before the "election". What is more likely: that the existing dictator and his supporters made defrauded the election to keep power or that some unknown entity defrauded an Telegram poll for not much gain. Unless Telegram poll's system was completely broken, but you'd expect other large polls to already have revealed that.
- d0mine 6y ago
  Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million people" The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.html https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness That's true for "reasonable" poll sizes. As your poll size increases past a certain point, it does begin to guarantee correctness. An election is a poll with the size of all eligible voters.
    - dstick 6y ago
      Yeah I think Telegram, like Whatsapp, is adopted broadly enough not to bias too heavily in one direction. Definitely not 90%, and especially not if that “bias” matches the word on the street.
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Telegram? 5% of the world uses Telegram. And I bet the 50+ age demographic is heavily underrepresented in that subset. Significant sample bias shows up in US polling using mediums that are exponentially more widespread. Nonetheless, I don't doubt the validity of these particular results, because I think we have enough corroborating evidence. We don't have to justify the rigorousness of a Telegram poll to come to that same conclusion.
        tripzilch 6y ago
        People in different parts of the world differ HUGELY in what instant-messaging communications platform they use. For instance people in the US still use text-messaging to a significant percentage. That's hard for me to believe as well. It's no use looking at Telegram's world usage, that's for sure.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  Same story when people predicted Hillary’s chances 99.9% based of Twitter polls. Your sample selection gives misleading predictions too easily.
  - _dark_matter_ 6y ago
    That is not what the OP is saying. They are indicating _not_ that the oppo party would win, but that the party in power is clearly lying about the results. If they are lying, then that calls for a new election.
jetzzz 6y ago
Official election results give Tikhanovskaya 500k votes, Telegram poll - 1M votes, 2x more.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  Ah I see, so there's no extrapolation involved, only the raw numbers.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  We don't know how many people who voted in the Telegram poll actually voted. Maybe only a quarter of the people in the Telegram poll actually voted. Its possible that some of the people in the Telegram poll are not eligible to vote (due to age or whatever). There could be other issues like people changing who they voted for in the election after previously voting in Telegram.
  - safog 6y ago
    It's a fair point, not sure why there are downvotes. I still think it's extremely likely that the official numbers are bogus but you can't really accept the Telegram numbers as truth either.
    - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
      "Official" figures have no ground in the reality. A crowdfunded campaign to check election results just produced a report, details are published in https://partizan-results.com/ https://partizan-results.com/ People behind this campaign are starting to reveal their names at last. I know personally one of them. My network says others are highly respectable as well.
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    Well, maybe that's simple enough to explain. Maybe scared citizens don't want to go and publicly vote for fear they're going to get the shit kicked out of them?
    - 6y ago
MrVitaliy 6y ago
There is no faith that the official polls use less bias data, or any data, really.
- phre4k 6y ago
  There is no faith that the Telegram polls use less bias data, or any data, really.
dalbasal 6y ago
> Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample It's not quite a Telegram problem, voters in a protest poll are not an unbiased sample. This is why elections where one side denies the legitimacy of an election "invalid," in the "we all accept the results" sense. Call it it petition, protest or public declaration. In that regard,the numbers are meaningful.
sulam 6y ago
Just keep in mind that the few non-governmental election monitors all had Lukashenko with less than 20% of the vote. This is not an isolated result.
dmix 6y ago
It's like using Reddit upvotes for a measure of American politics. They have a massive audience but Ron Paul and Bernie still weren't anywhere near the presidency.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

why would that blow someone's mind? Obviously if you're on an "anti" communication channel with a revolutionary mindset of course the majority will be overwhelmingly high against the dictator. That's by definition what they are revolting against.

notahacker 6y ago
Even allowing for the fact some Belarusians have multiple mobile phone numbers, as do some people who aren't eligible to vote for perfectly normal reasons, it's quite telling that somebody polled twice as many votes on a communication channel compared with the official 'count'.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  What about those who are underage? There's a surely a large internet-savy base with phone numbers who would otherwise be unable to vote.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    Underage people and foreigners are in the 'unable to vote for perfectly normal reasons' bracket. Extrapolating from census figures, you'd need pretty much every single person in the 13-17 age range to vote Tikhanovskaya to make up the disparity between Telegram and official tallies though. And if she got literally every teenager in the country to register a protest vote on a web app, there's a sneaking suspicion she might actually have got more than her 10% official tally with the adults too...
damnyou 6y ago
Forget percentages, even the raw numbers show a mismatch between official and Telegram results.

curiousllama 6y ago

Wow. For context, there are less than 10M people total in Belarus, and ~16% of the population is under age 15. In order for the numbers to tally, the protests would necessarily have to be made up (almost) entirely of children. https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html https://www.indexmundi.com/belarus/demographics_profile.html

aprdm 6y ago

Is it possible to consider that either Telegram has a vested interest on it or someone can easily obtain a telephone number in Belarus and hack the results?

contravariant 6y ago

Just in case anyone is wondering. The 'official' vote count for Thikhanovskaya is 588,622. So regardless of how unbiased a sample it may be the Telegram poll shows over 2x as many people (or phone numbers to be exact), willing to vote for Thikhanovskaya (at the time of writing). Use this information as you wish.

tomp 6y ago
How many of these "phone numbers" aren't eligible voters though (e.g. under 18)?
- contravariant 6y ago
  Who knows. And there are tons of such effects that bias the result in every possible direction. That's why I called upon people to use heir own judgement.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
crondung 6y ago
That's cool and all, except everyone in that country had 2 sim cards with 2 numbers. They don't have free long distance over there, nor are plans for cheap text+data the same plans as cheap calls. So I take this information to mean this poll was useless. Everyone who voted could vote twice, and felons and kids voted too.
- schmorptron 6y ago
  Wait, how is felons voting a bad thing?
  - atoav 6y ago
    Probably from the US, they didn't sign the human rights treaty and are a bit.. underdeveloped at that front.

severino 6y ago

This is great, maybe we can use Telegram for the actual election, because if we're absolutely sure that this poll is clean and we use it to ask for a new election, why don't we just take the results officially? If we don't, well, maybe we should make no assumptions about the results either.

Thorentis 6y ago

Sounds like a great INFOOP opportunity by a foreign power to further sow discontent.

moltar 6y ago

The problem with that approach is that it’s clearly biased towards the younger generations who are tech savvy. But it’s mostly the older people who would’ve voted for Luk. Note, I don’t support Luk in anyway, just pointing out the bias. Altho it does uncover the fact that the results are fabricated. But it’s not like anyone was doubting that anyways.

loxs 6y ago
Come on... I don't believe this. My whole extended family below 90 is using actively some varying portion of these: Viber (most used), WhatsApp, Facebook messenger. They are mostly spread in Turkey, Bulgaria and (to a lesser extend) the rest of Europe and some in the US. Grandmas use Viber regularly to share pics of their great-grandchildren with their first cousins (other grandmas). They send holiday wishes, news etc. And my people are not better educated compared to the rest of our part of the world. Everyone is very engaged with politics (mostly for or against Erdogan). I don't believe Belarus is any different. Yeah, younger people are probably more likely to vote in such a thing, still, I don't think the bias is huge.
- moltar 6y ago
  I’m from Eastern Europe myself. Yes older folks have accounts, but they aren’t active users. They wouldn’t join groups. They wouldn’t vote in the app. My parents in law are a testament to that. They too have all of those apps, yet they can’t even tell the difference between WhatsApp and Viber. We ask them to call us on WhatsApp and they’ll try to call on viber or Skype and then wonder why we are not answering and if there’s anything wrong with us :)
  - loxs 6y ago
    Maybe not the 85-90 year olds, but 65-70 year olds (my parents) are very politically active.

maqp 6y ago

"Poll shows that 1,184 million choose to vote for new president Tikhanovskaya." It is possible that Telegram is being impartial and providing more honest statistics wrt. what the citizens want. But it's also the case the results are unverifiable data broadcasted from Telegram's server over TLS-equivalent connection. MITM attack of client-server encryption, as well as compromise of the server broadcasting the results allow the attacker to alter the voting results. People acting on those results will allow Telegram to bypass democratic processes. Not saying Belarus is a democracy, but if this sets a precedent it will turn Telegram into a tool of political power, and power, as always, will corrupt. Even if Durov's team is being fair and honest (which I find unlikely considering Durov is yet another Russian oligarch who made their money spying on VKontakte users), they're also useful fools creating yet another architecture with centralized control over user data.

diimdeep 6y ago
Russian oligarch is very specific term[1], due to his age, Durov is missed time frame by 20 years to become one. Durov is Internet entrepreneur that is forced to become political expat, that's on the opposite spectrum from russian oligarch, like self made tech entrepreneur vs oil magnate trough inheritance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch