Protection from view fraud and fake submissions
On DareBay the money follows the real result. Inflated views and other people's work never reach a payout: the count runs independently of both the participant and the organizer, and suspicious submissions are rejected before they can compete for a prize.
Views are counted independently
- The numbers come from the platform itself. Screenshots and a participant's word count for nothing: what counts is the counter on the platform where the video is published.
- Inflated views the platform strips out are not paid for. What counts is what is left on the counter.
- Neither side can nudge the result. Neither the organizer nor the participant influences the number the payout is calculated from.
- The view threshold cuts out empty submissions. A submission that falls short of its contest threshold earns no payout.
Fakes do not reach a prize
- Duplicates and re-uploads. Image search across stills and video frames catches re-uploads and lightly edited copies.
- Someone else's authorship. Metadata that does not match the claimed origin of a file sends the submission to review.
- Generated instead of filmed. In contests that call for original authored work, generated content is filtered out.
- Account farms. Freshly created accounts with no history entering every contest at once, and clusters from a single IP range, stand out a mile.
Each check catches its own class of fake, and together they cover the ground. A flagged submission wins nothing until it has been checked, and the bigger the prize, the tighter the check on the winner.
The organizer can dispute
Spotted a fake the filters let through? The report is settled before the winner is confirmed, which means before any money moves. Abusing reports (filing them against everyone) hurts the organizer rating.
Cheating is a bad trade
The people who lose most to fakes are the other honest participants, and the rules are written in their favour. A cheater:
- Loses their submissions.
- Loses access to the prize even after "winning".
- Takes a hit to their participant rating, and that rating is visible on the profile to every future organizer.
- Loses the account on a second violation.
The participant rating is a real creator's main asset. Anyone who builds it honestly is not going to burn it for a single contest.
If something does slip through
Then the dispute process takes over and the outcome of the contest is revisited after the fact. What we commit to there is set out in the Our promise section of the manifesto.
→ See also: how winners are chosen, prohibited content.