Ask HN: Detecting Manipulation of HN Voting

2 pointsCraigJPerry2 comments

I can’t believe i’m writing such tinfoil hattery but... is it conceivable that there are accounts who have reached the 500 points to unlock down-voting and are now engaged in coordinated manipulation?

Does anyone perform any analysis of correlated voting patterns on HN? Is such log data available for analysis.

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The moderators do check, and I've send them suspicious submissions in the past for review. Though usually for upvoting, fake commenting, astroturfing or such. If you have strong suspicion you can use the contact link in the footer.

For discussion of coordinated flagging (I don't believe that happens) follow the links in this recent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23225570

On controversial discussions, flagging as a way of silencing an unpopular opinion does happen. This may not be coordinated but it definitely exists.

If you find a nicely political and inflammatory thread you can observe it easily.

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