In an exclusive interview, the current bane of Panhellenic’s existence, CornellFetch.com, revealed to the Cornell Review that it is tracking if users vote for or against girls in a specific sorority. The site also revealed that it even intends to release this data in the future.
The good news is that while they do intend to “release summarized data in aggregate charts,” they clarified that they will not release individual voter information.
The website, which allows visitors to show preference for one Cornellian over another, has become popular since its emergence on August 12th. It has certainly caught the attention of the Cornell community, but perhaps not in a positive way. According to Cornell Fetch, its creators have received “multiple death threats, harassment emails, threats to reveal doxxed information, organized spam campaigns against our servers, and multiple MySQL injection attacks against our databases.”
Check out our exclusive interview below to find out more about the controversial website:
CR: Why did you start Cornell Fetch?
CF: CornellFetch gathers data on voting behaviors of users when presented with choices from a niche network. It monitors how users react when given certain incentives.
CR: Who are the creators behind the website?
CF: No comment
CR: Do you feel that Cornell Fetch benefits the Cornell community? If so, how?
CF: CornellFetch does not have a special purpose other than possible data analysis. Part of the experiment was to monitor how Cornellians vote in certain situations. In fact, CornellFetch purposefully excluded any directions on how a user should vote. Any inferred instruction is made by the user. Not CornellFetch.
CR: Can I infer, then, that you are interested in seeing if users vote for girls in a specific sorority, or vote against girls in a specific sorority?
CF: Correct. Additionally, we measure how users will alter their vote choices and voting delays when given certain incentives (ex. points).
CR: Do you plan on releasing the data on how Cornellians vote in certain situations. Or is that for personal use for the creators of Cornell Fetch only?
CF: As of now, we plan on releasing the data we gather at the end of our experiment.
CR: Finally, how often is the top 10 updated, and how is it compiled?
CF: The table is generated by a program that counts the selection percentage of a profile based on over 300,000 votes. It will be updated once every few days. So far, we have only updated it twice.
Why can’t they release individual voter information? They’ve done nothing but objectify, disrespect, and violate the privacy of women who are already identified, so let’s see who’s doing the voting (i.e. let’s point out the jerks). Oh wait, I mean let’s identify the voters for science! Statistics, everyone!!
j/k, I know that’s never going to happen! Bros before hoes, amirite?… Ugh, I think I just threw up a little…
Honestly it’s impossible to gather voter’s personal data, other than the fact they’re voting from Cornell. I mean, it’s not like people fill in their names before they vote.
Such security (cowardliness?) in anonymity…