this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I think the more pessimistic view is that rather than removing downvoting entirely, they'll just lie on the votes for select threads. This isn't technologically difficult, nor does it need to be done manually. They could do something broad like making any admin flair post simply not count downvotes, guaranteeing it'll have a "net positive" (or maybe averaging karma from nearby positive comments, to avoid it being suspicious when an admin replies to a +10k comment and only gets +500).
I see that as more devious because it'll be hard to detect it's happening and the fact that you can still downvote other comments would lead to disbelief that it's what's happening.
Reddit already fudges numbers although not to that extent. If you go to someone's page from their profile and downvote all their comments it won't actually count.
Exact upvotes and downvotes are also a little fluid, it'll give you a number within a range but not an exact amount depending on the amount of interaction on a post.
This is not exactly true.
It's not that the votes don't count, it's that Reddit uses a particular technique where the karma you see is randomly modified every time to make it impossible to see if your vote has an effect.
The goal is to prevent bots from realizing when they have been shadow banned. It makes it easier to control automated vote manipulation since bots will just make a new account if they realize they're banned.