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Comment by kertoip_1 | Hacker News Reader

So if it is possible with comments, does it mean it is possible with voting? I'm wondering how many posts recently came to main page upvoted by bots

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Below submission had over 1,000 votes before being flagged.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40117443

It's surely possible but it's not quite that easy, otherwise you'd see it daily in comments. It's similar for front page posts but harder since both users and moderators nuke spam-looking things as they are highly visible.

HN doesn't have any integrity about voting in general. Look at the "about" text of https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pwdisswordfishc for example, and then look at the username.

There is a whole family of pwdisswordfish* accounts btw. The "b" account's "about" text even has a holier-than-thou attitude about it.

If you go to https://news.ycombinator.com/newest , from time to time there apears stories with 50 upvotes in 30 minutes, and perhaps a few sockpuppets/shills comments. If you do the math, they should be in the front page, but misteriously they aren't. So the conclussion is that HN has a secret feature that detect (some of) the tricks. I think I read some coment from pg or dang about voting rings, but it was a long time ago, but it has no details. The details are part of the secret sause.

Also people flag strange threads, so the detection is not only automatic. If you notice something strange, you can send an email to dang: hn@ycombinator.com

you're assuming votes from those accounts are being included in vote counts

You're missing the point that I didn't need to assume it.

if you have a way to map votes to the account that made them, I'm all ears.

That looks like a person, or a pretty good HNGPT. It's not your average spam. (Unless most comments have been deleted.)

When I said "Look at the username", I meant that. You're not going to get anything by analyzing the posting style of a shared account.

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