Shill/bot upvoting?

submitted by Intuit from self.SaidIt

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[–]SaidOverRed 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Okay well I'm going to be honest here. I use the "LOL" button like everyone else: it's a downvote to things that are trying to be serious and an upvote to things that are trying to be funny.

So for instance, I clicked the funny upvote on this because ... I don't think it's bots doing this. It's just people like me laughing at you. Sorry.

[–]Intuit[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I was referring to new posts that have exactly the same number of insight and fun points, within a few hours of posting, with no comments from anyone. This suggests bots that just upvote the creator's content.

This has nothing to do with votes made by actual people who are reading the content and reacting/responding. The underlying goal of my post was to make room for more of this rather than synthetically-upvoted things.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This suggests bots that just upvote the creator's content.

Or it could be someone with 8 aliases, maybe even 8 different browsers open.

I know for a fact that they tweak their votes. I can upvote or unvote so that it shows 9/7 and moments later they'll "fix" it back to 8/8. If 6 other people vote they will remove 6 of their votes to keep it at 8/8.

[–]SaidOverRed 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This 'timing' argument you are making holds a lot more weight with me. You might want to upvote your post to focus there.

I have personally seen this behavior. Perhaps required responses before votes? Maybe it would be worth it. Not sure. You already need a login, so it's literally just a question of partial lurking vs full participation.