I've been reading up on various methods used to control places like Reddit. Of course it has been widely theorized that Reddit is heavily manipulated by astroturfing campaigns, fake comments, but it is also assumed that the ability to front page certain posts is also not organic.The US government operates so called "counter-influence" campaigns and may be behind upvoting "wholesome" content on Reddit as we speak. Since this forum shares a similar infrastructure I was wondering what kind of similar attacks it faces. What if the cabal was using fake accounts to upvote realy stupid posts on here to discredit us? They could upvote the wackiest conspiracy theories from the stupidest looking websites and then a new potential member would look at us like we're morons. Or upvoting hostile content so we tear our selves apart. What do you all think?
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It can definitely be manipulated, and quite easily at that. It would probably take me an hour to create a bunch of accounts and use a script that launches a headless browser and down or upvotes every post and comment it can find (or just those with specific keywords).
Completely pointless though. Upvotes don't equate to truth, and downvotes don't suppress ideas. Caring about internet points is just another form of the "appeal to authority" fallacy.