HACKER Q&A
📣 linkdd

What's going on with Reddit's notation system?


Hello HN!

I'm new to Reddit (always had an unjustified bad opinion about this social network). I've started writing more articles on Medium and trying to get more views/followers by posting them to the relevant sub-reddits.

That said, I don't understand how the notation system works. Every time I hit refresh the number of upvote changed. Even if I hit refresh every half second.

Are there just so many people that downvote and upvote (almost 10s of downvotes AND upvotes per second??) or is that a dark pattern to make you believe there is something happening?


  👤 josephcsible Accepted Answer ✓
This is called "vote fuzzing", if you want to search for it. Anyway, it is indeed Reddit making up fake votes.

👤 readflaggedcomm
Even accounting for "vote fuzzing," there is no telling what activity on that site is real. After all, it started out all fake: https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/steve-huffman-built-reddit-f...