Winners

Frequently Asked Question

• What did you give away?

  Fifty (50) 2nd-gen iPhone SEs, and fifty (50) Xiaomi Poco F2 Pros, skinned in Teardown.

• How could I have entered?

  This giveaway spanned two different social media platforms: Twitter and Instagram. Specifically:

  • Twenty-five (25) iPhone SEs were given away via Twitter.
  • Twenty-five (25) Poco F2 Pros were given away via Twitter.
  • Twenty-five (25) iPhone SEs were given away via Instagram.
  • Twenty-five (25) Poco F2 Pros were given away via Instagram.

  To enter the Twitter giveaway, you needed to:

  • Follow @ZacksJerryRig on Twitter.
  • Follow @dbrand on Twitter.

  To enter the Instagram giveaway, you needed to:

  • Follow @ZacksJerryRig on Instagram.
  • Follow @dbrand on Instagram.

  Participants were encouraged to maximize their odds of winning by following Zack and dbrand on both platforms.

• I already follow both of you! Was I still eligible?

  Of course.

• Was the giveaway open worldwide?

  As long as we ship to your country, you were eligible.

• When did you select the winners?

  We did so in waves:

  • Ten winners were selected on July 18th, at 1:00 PM EDT.
  • Ten more winners were selected 72 hours later, on July 21st at 1:00 PM EDT.
  • Winners continued to be selected, ten at a time, in 72-hour intervals, until...
  • The final ten winners were selected on August 14th, at 1:00 PM EDT.
• How were the winners be selected?

  We fetched a cross-section of dbrand and JerryRigEverything followers on both Twitter and Instagram, then selected at random from both pools. Each week, five were selected from Twitter and five were selected from Instagram.

• How do we know it's truly random?

  We used a custom Python script which was specifically programmed for this giveaway. It used the Twitter Public API and Instagram Basic Display API to download lists of all @dbrand followers, as well as lists of all @ZacksJerryRig followers.

  Once the full lists were loaded, the script generated two lists of IDs, one for users who existed on both Twitter lists, and one for users who existed on both Instagram lists. This ensured that the potential winners were following both @dbrand and @ZacksJerryRig on the relevant social media platform.

  From these pools of unique account IDs, random entries were picked using a randomly generated seed based on the NumPy project. These random picks were the resulting winners.

• How did you announce winners?

  Their Twitter/Instagram handles were posted on this page.

• How were the prizes shipped?

  Every prize was shipped via FedEx with tracking.

• Did the winners need to pay anything to receive their prize (shipping costs, duties, taxes, etc.)?

  Of course not. Everything was paid for by dbrand.

• If I won, did I need to do anything once I received the device?

  Tweet out a photo tagging @dbrand and @ZacksJerryRig to verify that you've received your prize.

• If I sent you dozens of emails begging for a device, would it have improved my odds of winning?

  No. Please don't do this. We never acknowledge or reply to any emails asking to be picked as a winner. Selection was 100% random.

• Can robots predict the future?

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