{"id":100106,"date":"2026-08-19T22:43:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T22:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/l-a-times-reporter-fake-polling-firm-shut-down-after-one-question-social-experiment-to-see-how-far-unverified-info-can-spread\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T22:43:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T22:43:45","slug":"l-a-times-reporter-fake-polling-firm-shut-down-after-one-question-social-experiment-to-see-how-far-unverified-info-can-spread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/l-a-times-reporter-fake-polling-firm-shut-down-after-one-question-social-experiment-to-see-how-far-unverified-info-can-spread\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A. Times Reporter: Fake Polling Firm Shut Down After One Question, “Social Experiment” To See How Far Unverified Info Can Spread"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Times City Hall reporter Noah Goldberg told “Inside the Issues with Amrit Singh” on Spectrum News 1 LA<\/a> about the story he broke about a group called “Median Polling” distributing completely fake polls. Goldberg writes: “Poll Showing Bass Leading Raman By Double Digits Was Bogus, Company Says”<\/a> He says after a single emailed question, the firm that published the poll online said they were shutting down. And after a single follow-up request to see the alleged poll’s crosstabs, they admitted there never was a poll, and it was all a “social experiment.” “Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” they wrote.<\/a> “It looked a little fishy to me because it was a completely anonymous website,” Goldberg said. “They only had about 20 followers on Twitter\/X and had only started posting last week, when it posted a poll about the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, where it was off by more than 25%.” “If it was a real poll, I was interested in seeing it… When I followed up yesterday, they reached back out just from a generic contact email saying that they were shutting down their polling operation and that they didn’t have anyone to speak with me,” he said. “I asked another follow-up — like, fine, but can I see the crosstabs? That’s when they admitted and told me that it was a social experiment. There was no real polling done.” “They didn’t immediately say, ‘Ha ha, we got everyone. This was a social experiment.’ It was only when I really pressed them that they came out with this. And then, as I was reporting, that’s when they put it up on their website, saying a similar thing,” he said. “It would have been amazing if the email came back from, like, Ashton Kutcher, saying, You’ve been Punk’d!” joked Singh. About whether the goal was to manipulate betting markets, Goldberg said they were largely unsuccessful. “Kalshi told me it didn’t see any increase in betting, but the question of legality does center around whether or not they were attempting to manipulate the betting market,” he said. “That could be fraud.” “But if it was really just a ‘social experiment,’ it is much less likely any law was broken.” “I would really love to figure out who was behind this group, Median Strategies,” he said. “I hope it was Ashton Kutcher.”
\nRealClearPolitics Videos<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Times City Hall reporter Noah Goldberg told “Inside the Issues with Amrit Singh” on Spectrum News 1 LA about the story he broke about a group called “Median Polling” distributing completely fake polls. Goldberg writes: “Poll Showing Bass Leading Raman By Double Digits Was Bogus, Company Says” He says after a single emailed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4996,46,946,16014,2827,4318,5941,11101,6016,3769,1252,1464,457,4049,30304],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}