Elon Musks’s reign of Twitter terror now extends to one of the largest factions on the site: K-pop fans. This year’s MAMA Awards, an annual Korean music awards show hosted by Mnet, a channel owned by massive Seoul-based media conglomerate CJ ENM, says voting for two categories has been affected by “internal changes within Twitter.”
In an
It’s unclear if the internal changes they refer to are the result of
Many fans were frustrated by the change. “So we were literally voting on twitter and posting those hashtags for nothing???!”
Some
“MAMA AWARDS monitors the voting data in real time to flag any irregularities and any abnormal votes monitored through post-data verifications are excluded from the final vote count. To ensure transparency and objectivity, the entire voting process, including the final vote tally, is verified by Samil PwC – the same company that handles the votes for the Academy Awards. MAMA is a all-round awards that incorporates global index, reflecting the voices from global fans and data from global music platforms. As the leading global K-POP awards, it is our priority to ensure fair and accurate voting results.”
The Awards have also added a notice to all visitors of their website assuring that they have “conducted a thorough verification to ensure fair and accurate voting results” and that votes “will also go through a thorough verification and data confirmation process.”
CJ ENM last came under significant scrutiny for vote rigging between 2019 and 2021, when producers of Produce 101, a popular competition series on Mnet, were
The MAMA Awards heralds itself as the “World’s No.1 K-pop Awards.” The event is scheduled to take place over two nights, starting Nov. 29, with performers including Stray Kids, ZICO, Tomorrow x Together, NewJeans, NMIXX, and BIBI.