The ‘amoral’ hackers who rigged Brexit second referendum petition
Experts reveal the tactics of anonymous cyber-yobs who think it's hilarious to meddle in British politics
Hackers from the controversial online community 4Chan used a simple computer program to rig a petition calling for a second Brexit referendum, it has been claimed.
Three million people have now signed a petition calling for a referendum re-run, but it has now emerged that many of these signatures are fake.
Over the weekend, House of Commons officials removed 77,000 “fraudulent signatures” from the tally.
But it is feared the number of dodgy entries could be much higher.
Louise Mensch, a former Tory MP who is now living in America, claimed cyber-yobs used "simple hacker" techniques to put false names and address on the petition.
The anonymous jokers are understood to be linked to 4Chan, an "amoral" online community which launches cruel stunts designed to tickle the dark humour of its members.
Its most famous stunts include bodyshaming young girls by starting a fake viral craze which celebrated the "bikini bridge", which as "an incredibly sexy phenomenon wherein bikini bottoms are suspended between the two hip bones, causing a space between the bikini and the lower abdomen".
This fake trend quickly began to make young girl feel bad about their weight, with "the bikini bridge is yet another example of piling pressure on women to feel increasingly anxious about their bodies".
"The spamming of the petition is a magnificent 4Chan prank that the Chads and Stacys of the BBC and liberal media swallowed whole,"
"4Chan’s posters had set up scripts and bots to add fake names to the petition at an impossible rate, spamming it with unlikely addresses in ‘Ghana’ and elsewhere."
On Friday, the Westminster petition site crashed, prompting suggestions it had collapsed under the weight of traffic from people who wanted a second Brexit referendum.
More than 20,000 people from North Korea appeared to have signed the petition, as well as 13,000 from France.
But it now appears likely that 4Chan hackers used "auto-voting" software to add in huge numbers of false names.
Similar software was so a hacker called Moot was declared person of the year.
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The neverendum story
After the second referendum petition went viral, jokers set up their own fake campaigns to mock the bad losers of Brexit. Here are the names of some of the funniest:
If England lose to Iceland: Replay the match until we get the result we desire
A petition for a rematch of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 as we are unhappy with the result
Allow Stuart Pearce to re-take his penalty from the 1990 World Cup semi-final
Redraw the National Lottery because I didn't win
In the modern age, signing a petition isn't what it used to be.
Anyone can pledge support for a good cause in the same time it takes to write a Facebook post, before smugly "virtue signalling" to their chums.
On 4chan, one prankster wrote: "Most online petitions are fraudulent as f*** due to the lack of any verification needed and the fact you can make a petition about anything."
We spoke to academic William Watkin from Brunel University, who has been researching the dark world of 4Chan.
He said: "The anonymity of 4Chan appears to bring out the darkest tendencies of people."
Professor Watkin said some members of this community enjoyed a practice called "life ruining", in which a target is harassed so badly that it destroys their life.
In one case, a woman was tricked into giving her identity away before her Facebook profile was hacked and sexual images distributed to friends and family.
The professor believes 4Chan hackers used fake Twitter accounts to stoke up tensions with the Russians during Euro 2016.
"There are many examples of the internet skewing events through misinformation," he added.
In one recent online petition, the public voted to call a research vessel Boaty McBoatface.
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