[wickawic]

I could be wrong but I felt this happened on the Spotify thread that is currently on the front page. All the inital reaction was negative, about how the piece was a 'submarine,' etc. Now the top 5 comments are about Spotify's new killer feature and how happy the customers are...

[dang]

I took a look at the thread I think you're referring to, and both those comments and their upvotes are by established users with no signs of fakery that either we or our software could pick up on.

What you observed is probably a different phenomenon: early comments in a thread often start off negative, and only later do other users show up to post positively—their motivation being to balance things out. Often the positive comments to get the most upvotes in the end, but the whole process takes a while to play out. If you've ever run across a thread where the top comment says, "I can't believe how negative this thread is!" and proceeds to make a positive case with great fervor, this dynamic is probably why.

[dpweb]

I dont think you could stop upvote fakery. Maybe like highway speeding just try to control it enough to keep things somewhat safe.

Old, established accts on all the sites can be, and are, sold to people for purposes of fake upvoting. Maybe limit the number of upvotes one can do in a day. Doesn't seem a major inconvienence and makes the upvotes more valuable.