Certainly possible but I’m sure the odds are astronomically low. After I saw this happen 3 times I started refreshing every minute and each time there was a change, both counts had increased, and this happened 8 times in a row. I could see a distribution happening of something like a vote up at minute 2, vote down at minute 3 vote up at minute 12, vote down at minute 20, etc, but this was - vote up and vote down at minute 5, same thing at minute 11, same thing at minute 16, etc, 8 times concurrently (the minutes listed here are an example, I wasn’t tracking exact time between events).
Just so you know, some of us actually read through a chain of comments first, trying to get the full argument before making judgements, and then go back and upvote and downvote all the comments quickly in a row. So, that might seem like a bot doing it at the same time, but its just someone batch voting after reading.
To make it clear what I am talking about - I would expect any voting distribution for 16 votes to be at least semi-random on a controversial comment, in example such as this:
However, the distribution as it occurred looked like this on the first 16 votes:
A controversial comment will have such a ratio, but any comment controversial or not will almost never have this kind of distribution unless there are multiple accounts waiting for vote up events to occur so that they can send a vote down.
I can believe this happening 2, 3, even 4 times by chance, but not 8 times.
I’m entirely aware, I’m specifically referencing my top level comment which at the time had no replies.
Additionally, what you are describing does not explain both a vote up and vote down, occurring at the same time 8 times consecutively, so I’m not quite sure I understand what your point is as what actions occurred prior to hitting the button doesn’t enter into what I’m describing as far as I can determine.
Even if people read a thread before scrolling back up and hitting the up or down button, them hitting that button at the same time as someone else hitting the opposing button 8 times in a row within a few moments of each other is still a statistical anomaly.
See my other comment in which I graphed what I am talking about in order to better explain myself.
I reported their comment for suspected downvote manipulation earlier and requested the admins investigate the votes. Now I came back and 10 of the downvotes were slashed off of it.
So it seems like those ‘astronomically low odds’ turned out to be at least partially correct. Otherwise why would the admins have slashed 10 downvotes from the post. It feels like the odds that 10 people had a change of heart are more astronomically low than the more likely reason which is that they got their votes slashed and their accounts banned by the admins due to an investigation finding them to be downvote bots or downvote trolls.
Fascinating, didn’t know moderators could investigate such things effectively (I was unaware of any mod tool that made that easy to do).
Its early so I only had time to take a cursory glance and the vote counts were still looking the same to me - which one had the votes removed after your report?
Good to hear nonetheless, definitely felt something was up, thanks!
Well it’s actually only Admins and instance-level moderators who can do it at the current time. Regular community mods can’t see them or pull them up, at least not in the current version of Lemmy.
It was his main comment which had the votes slashed, it was sitting at -40 but was slashed to -30. Speaking in terms of raw downvotes not just score. The +42 score it had didn’t change at all.
Certainly possible but I’m sure the odds are astronomically low. After I saw this happen 3 times I started refreshing every minute and each time there was a change, both counts had increased, and this happened 8 times in a row. I could see a distribution happening of something like a vote up at minute 2, vote down at minute 3 vote up at minute 12, vote down at minute 20, etc, but this was - vote up and vote down at minute 5, same thing at minute 11, same thing at minute 16, etc, 8 times concurrently (the minutes listed here are an example, I wasn’t tracking exact time between events).
Im pretty sure you’re seeing a pattern where there isnt one, your post is just controversial
As I said, certainly possible, I was just surprised by the distribution over time, not the distribution of vote type.
Just so you know, some of us actually read through a chain of comments first, trying to get the full argument before making judgements, and then go back and upvote and downvote all the comments quickly in a row. So, that might seem like a bot doing it at the same time, but its just someone batch voting after reading.
To make it clear what I am talking about - I would expect any voting distribution for 16 votes to be at least semi-random on a controversial comment, in example such as this:
However, the distribution as it occurred looked like this on the first 16 votes:
A controversial comment will have such a ratio, but any comment controversial or not will almost never have this kind of distribution unless there are multiple accounts waiting for vote up events to occur so that they can send a vote down.
I can believe this happening 2, 3, even 4 times by chance, but not 8 times.
I’m entirely aware, I’m specifically referencing my top level comment which at the time had no replies.
Additionally, what you are describing does not explain both a vote up and vote down, occurring at the same time 8 times consecutively, so I’m not quite sure I understand what your point is as what actions occurred prior to hitting the button doesn’t enter into what I’m describing as far as I can determine.
Even if people read a thread before scrolling back up and hitting the up or down button, them hitting that button at the same time as someone else hitting the opposing button 8 times in a row within a few moments of each other is still a statistical anomaly.
See my other comment in which I graphed what I am talking about in order to better explain myself.
There were 10 or so no content account downvoters that I just banned, but also a lot of genuine downvotes.
Thanks Dessalines!
I reported their comment for suspected downvote manipulation earlier and requested the admins investigate the votes. Now I came back and 10 of the downvotes were slashed off of it. So it seems like those ‘astronomically low odds’ turned out to be at least partially correct. Otherwise why would the admins have slashed 10 downvotes from the post. It feels like the odds that 10 people had a change of heart are more astronomically low than the more likely reason which is that they got their votes slashed and their accounts banned by the admins due to an investigation finding them to be downvote bots or downvote trolls.
Fascinating, didn’t know moderators could investigate such things effectively (I was unaware of any mod tool that made that easy to do).
Its early so I only had time to take a cursory glance and the vote counts were still looking the same to me - which one had the votes removed after your report?
Good to hear nonetheless, definitely felt something was up, thanks!
Well it’s actually only Admins and instance-level moderators who can do it at the current time. Regular community mods can’t see them or pull them up, at least not in the current version of Lemmy.
It was his main comment which had the votes slashed, it was sitting at -40 but was slashed to -30. Speaking in terms of raw downvotes not just score. The +42 score it had didn’t change at all.
I see, thanks!