American Idol fans took to Reddit after Monday night’s newest episode of Season 24 to share their frustration with the new social media voting method. Allowing fans to cast their votes on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok seems to be causing problems.
American Idol Fans Complain About Social Media Voting
This season, American Idol is allowing fans to vote for their favorite contestants on social media, along with the usual online and text methods. Voting was open during Monday’s live show, but in order to ensure accuracy, the announcement of the results was delayed until next week.
“Does anyone else think the eliminations weren’t announced because the voting was so screwed up?” wrote a fan on Reddit after the show. “There’s never been any way to independently audit/verify the results but this is the most unreliable method yet.”
Other fans shared their dislike of the new voting method, in which fans comment the name of their favorite singer in the comments of a pinned post on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. One user wrote, “If they want to do the social media voting then they need to go back to the old format of voting until the next day and results at the beginning of the next episode.”
Another Reddit post calls this one of the “messiest seasons” of the show, with one commenter writing, “Social media voting is making it even more of a mess.”
Fans also complained about how voting is only open during the show, with one person writing, “I also hate that they close voting during the last commercial break. It’s so unfair to the person who is last because you’ve had like no time to vote after their performance if you thought it was worth of a vote. You just have to kind of hope their performance is good for the night.”
They added that “social media voting opens up to the possibility of bot accounts spam voting.” According to another post, people were still commenting on the pinned social media posts 45 minutes after voting closed. The poster added that they feel bad for the people who “have to sift through and disqualify any vote sent in too late, any name misspelled, etc.”
What do you think about this season’s American Idol voting system? Do you like social media voting? Let us know in the comments below.
Words by:
Jill O'Rourke Jill O’Rourke is a contributor at Talent Recap, writing news stories and recaps for shows like ‘AGT,’ ‘The Voice,’ and ‘American Idol.’ She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in English and Film Studies, and has been writing about pop culture since 2012, with previous bylines at Crushable and A Plus. Jill spends her free time binge-watching sitcoms and daydreaming about life as a hobbit
