How we count
These numbers will be shown to cereal and packaging companies, so they have to hold up to a skeptical analyst. Here are the rules.
One vote per device
Each device gets one cereal vote and one vote on the crumb question. We recognize a device by a signed cookie set by this site. In apps that block cookies, we use a one-way scrambled code made from the connection’s IP address, the browser’s identifier, and the date. We never store the IP address itself.
Checked for bots
Every vote and signup is checked by Cloudflare Turnstile on our server. A vote that fails the check, or arrives without one, is kept in the raw records but never counted.
Raw and verified
We keep two counts. Raw counts include everything that reached us. Verified counts include only votes that passed the bot check and weren’t repeats from the same device. Everything published on this site is verified.
The 1,000-vote threshold
Results stay hidden until there are 1,000 verified cereal votes, so early totals can’t steer later voters. Until then, we show only the running count.
Write-ins
“Something else” votes count toward the total right away. The text people type is reviewed by a person before any of it is shown.
Confirmed emails
An email address counts as confirmed only after its owner taps the link we send and then taps Confirm on our page. Confirmed emails are the strongest signal we have, and we report them separately from votes everywhere.
Where people came from
Many visitors arrive from short videos, and we track which video sent them so we know what to make next. That tracking never changes how a vote is counted.
Limits we know about
- Two people using the same browser on the same connection on the same day, with cookies blocked, count as one.
- Someone who clears cookies and also switches networks could vote twice. Turnstile makes doing that at scale hard, and confirmed emails don’t have this problem.
- The results measure the interest of people who chose to vote. They aren’t a random-sample survey.
Auditing
Every table can be exported with timestamps and scrambled identifiers, so anyone reviewing the campaign can check the totals against the records. Questions: vadim.k@smartland.com.