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It allegedly registered my complaint without me being logged-in, so whatever they do, it's for show only?

This reeks of a cheap shot.

Just because your not signed in doesn't mean it can't register a complaint - by not tracking username or personal details with the complaint the point of being signed in is reduced to nothing. They can't even make sure you do it twice without tracking your user ID (which they won't do because they could then get username or password).

Therefore being able to register a complaint not signed in seems odd but fine.

That's the whole point I was making. When it doesn't register username or any kind of identifiable information, it just counts 'votes', which doesn't amount to anything, as in the end it's just an arbitrary number open to manipulations.

What do they want to achieve by having the user click a button just to feel good?

I think it would be short-sighted of Google to simply count votes without recording some sort of "authenticated" bit for later use.

Counting 'votes' provides useful data for Google internal decision-making.

Counting 'authenticated votes' provides useful data for Google to publish.

Lacking any information from Google, it is unclear whether this is just a "feel good" button or if it's an actual authenticated vote-counting system.

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