In case you're wondering how they accomplished some of that there was a piece of software called Megaphone[0] released during the 2006 Lebanon war that automati

In case you're wondering how they accomplished some of that there was a piece of software called Megaphone[0] released during the 2006 Lebanon war that automatically cast votes for users on online polls on the internet concerning their favourite middle eastern country. It even received attention and support from their Foreign Ministry. The developers went on to form a company[1] "to influence ratings on sites which allow users to rate articles or other items" with $2m in funding from Sequoia. Not sure if they still up-and-running. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collactive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collactive