Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by splonk 3222 days ago
This does actually happen, possibly for several other reasons. Bought ratings often come accompanied by other ratings, whether bought or not, just to attempt to cloak the bot. This even happens in systems where there aren't any countermeasures being taken to remove bots yet - I was vaguely involved in spam detection in one and saw all sorts of cloaking behavior even before we'd turned on any sort of mitigation.