Bounty Program. Lip service?

I would love to have your capacity to say it all in one sentence like you do :slight_smile:

Solid point. I think the question of whether there is more e-d0ping on Zwift than d0pe d0ping IRL is an interesting if academic question. But once you add the regular d0ping that could be happening on Zwift too, combined with the fact that amateurs d0pe in IRL cycling all the time even when $ isnā€™t on the line, the ā€˜total cheatingā€™ becomes obvious.

As for that more academic questionā€“I happen to think thatā€™s obvious too. There will be more electronic cheating in virtual racing. There is an intuitive rejection from a lot of people of pharmaceutically enhancing their performance. Itā€™s a bias that gets a lot of attention actually. There are Olympic swimmers who come from nations that literally donā€™t have an Olympic size pool in the country for them to train in. So coming from a wealthy country is a huge competitive advantage, and no one cares about it. But take a drug to get a less-effective advantage, and everyone intuitively cares.

So someone jumping on Zwift says ā€œWell, I could inject myself with some drugsā€¦but ick. And I donā€™t even know where to get those drugs in the first place. And I could also just click this field and put in a different weight.ā€ One of those wonā€™t even feel like cheating to a lot of people.

1 Like

Schoolteacher Lucy: ā€œThereā€™s a monster eating all the village children! Everyone lock up your children!ā€

Reporter interviews detective Snoop. ā€œHi Mr Snoop. There are lots of reports of a monster eating the village children. What are your thoughts?ā€

Mr Snoop: ā€œThereā€™s nothing to see here. That teacher Lucy is causing a lot of troubleā€

Reporter: ā€œBut there are children missing, and a pile of bones outside his caveā€

Mr Snoop: ā€œIgnore that. If villagers think something bad is happening, they should call us, not scare all the other the villagersā€

Reporter: ā€œYeah youā€™re right, thanks for reassuring us there is no problem. What number should the villagers call?ā€

Mr Snoop: ā€œOh thereā€™s no number. Weā€™ll look at sorting one. The key thing is the villagers donā€™t get scaredā€

Teacher Lucy: ā€œBUUTTT THE BONNNEEESS!!! AND THE MISSSING CHILDREN!!! AND THE MONSTER LITERALLY STANDING RIGHT THERE!!!ā€

9 Likes

@Chris_Snook you have embarrassed Zwift, as well as yourself, with that joke of an article. Blaming Luciano for spreading news of the problem is absolutely outrageous.

Absolutely disgusting.

6 Likes

this thread about to be locked and unlisted

I mean maintenanced

5 Likes

I think the phrase is ā€œclient journalismā€

Meanwhile a female vet rode a whole race at 5.6W/kg last week and no-one batted an eyelid, certainly not the team manager who I emailed specifically about said rider a while back.

(And itā€™s not like she is some pro cyclist at the top of her game, just some randomer with a dodgy power meter or inaccurate weight or most likely both.)

4 Likes

But they are monitoring it according to @Chris_Snook . They know it all! So if they donā€™t do something about it itā€™s because they just donā€™t want to do something about it, right?
Super logic. Eddy Hoole for sure it was the first time he used his"technique" :joy::joy::joy:
I think I have some data proving it is not the case.
So they knew about it and still let him participate to many flagship races knowing he was wrongdoing, right?
All this makes perfect sense.
@Chris_Snook : as Zwift head of comms and PR you seem authorized to talk about dystopian worlds where I created by myself sticky wattting among others, and also you are omniscient and can monitor all wrongdoing even backdated, I assume you are also empowered to disclose the launching date of the bug bounty program, right? What are you waiting?

2 Likes

Agreed thatā€™s frustrating.

Yesterday on ADZ we had a 45kg young Chinese athlete zooming past with 4-5w/kg, 5 people commented on it. It just makes a farce of the situation.

Which brings me to one other thing - hiding the weight of riders. Given itā€™s possible to work out the weight of a rider via simple maths, why bother hiding it in the companion app or elsewhere?

I think it should be shown and Iā€™d be happy for mine to be shown.

1 Like

While Zwift is confident that the systems currently in place to ensure both the stability of Zwiftā€™s information technology and to provide fair and credible competition are strong and working properly, we are also aware that there are people who attempt to cheat in Zwift. To find and disqualify athletes cheating in high-level esports races, such as the upcoming UCI Cycling Esports World Championships, we will be using all available tools, including Zwift Power, video weigh-ins, and other methods, to ensure fair competition. Data will also be scrutinized after competition. Itā€™s our hope that people competing in community races will focus on the fun and training aspects of those events, but we know that there are people who will cheat to win at every level. There are simply too many community events to allow us to control all community races as closely as worlds, however, we have taken steps to protect the credibility of racing. To support even more fair competition at all levels, we encourage any Zwifter to use this Zwift Power form to report suspect performances. Zwift will take appropriate action to remedy race performances that are deemed to violate established rules.

Thatā€™s not the promised bug bounty program though is it? It was Eric that promised it, maybe he can check in and explain himself again? Or is that saved for when the ā– ā– ā– ā–  hits the fan and things need to be quickly quietened down? Yunno. Lip service. Like the OP title.

5 Likes

The form seems overly cumbersome.
If Iā€™m in a race or a work out and I see a questionable rider, Iā€™m happy to throw a flag but why is it my responsibility to confirm if the rider has 15 rides in Zwift Power.
Donā€™t even bother, most riders in races and those that are cheating on segments are not on Zwift Power because Zwift has never officially asked racers to join Zwift power.
Most racers are not on Zwift Power anyway so lets just assume that answer is NO.

This leads me to another complaint/observation.
I can get on the ZCA and see all the participants in a race by class and their power.

Why canā€™t these same riders and info just go into Zwift Power.

Zwift Power has a better lay out and info presentation than the ZCA.

1 Like

Yes, at the very least it seems odd that someone has to cheat at least 15 times in order to report them.

This form has been around for ages.

So all they will get is a DQ in zwiftpower and thats about all, if they even are on zwiftpower?

This is what I was told in June, when my thread was deleted.

ā€˜Weā€™ve taken some steps for ZHQ to be more active within the community as well as having more people actively monitoring and responding to reports of bugs within the game. We plan to continue building upon the momentum that we have built in these areas. In relation to a bug bounty program focused on system and infrastructure vulnerabilities, we have begun the research, but the development and implementation will take time.ā€™

I wonder if thereā€™s any progress to report?

PS: first bit is hilarious, I forgot about that

2 Likes

Are we talking about 2 different things here or are they connected enough that itā€™s the same thing? Bug Bounty to find issues with the software and people exploiting the software in order to cheat are not the same thing in my mind.

From the OP.

1 Like

To be fair to Zwiftā€¦ there are A LOT of questionable performancesā€¦ most I would argue are unintentional and just need a little (kind) nudging by community members to set right.
The major issues are those people repeatedly deliberately manipulating things in order to win or troll the rest of us.
I would suggest that the current system is not quite up to the task of dealing with it. Think of the thousands of reports or questionable users relative to the resources Zwift has available to police these thingsā€¦ are we suggesting that there be several full time paid positions just processing flags and reports?

I agree completely, I think we all want a more legitimate racing ecosystem. I for one am sick of people saying zwift racing is just a bunch of cheaters so whatā€™s the point?

1 Like

laughing-hysterically-laugh

2 Likes