This is 100% theory, and there is zero chance of anyone ever proving evidence supporting this thought. If that bothers you, please move on, I'm not here to convince you of anything. I'm here to talk theory, not advance that theory to fact.
After reddit spilled over into voat, there has been an obvious shift in both websites. Reddit got strangely tolerant of free thinking (which I assume is the puppets trying to save their own game) and voat got really big on posting videos with zero evidence supporting the claim mad in the title.
It seems pretty clear to me that there is a psy-op going on to make voat look like a haven for extremism, and appear as if supporting evidence is optional in our definition of a "quality post." We can not let this happen, or we as a website will quickly be as credible to the outside world as buzzfeed style blogspam is.
When I first came to this site from reddit, I loved how reluctant people were to use downvotes. Now I realize this could be a problem at the opposite extreme from reddit. I had originally planned to keep my account at 0 total downvotes, but I have shifted this opinion after observing the drivel that is being posted. I will admit it is perfectly plausible that the crappy submissions are just vote-farming, but the functional effect is the same, whether it is sock-puppets or 14 year old kids bored in class.
So, a few questions for those of you that have been here longer than a month:
1 Outside of this sub, would you guys say there has been a spike in shit-tier conspiracy submissions? (/v/videos seems to be a hotspot for this)
2 Do you feel that theories without direct evidence (like this one ironically enough) are harmful to our credibility? Is an unsupported theory more or less dangerous if it regards real world events as opposed to psychological and meta-topics?
3 If you feel this is the case, what should be done to preserve our reputation?
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Hateblade ago
IP addresses matter even less than accounts do. The best way would be just as is being done, limit ways to game the up/down voting system. Watch behavior and not actual posts. Bots are very likely already as we speak gaming the system and setting up accounts that seem legitimate and have voting powers. However, I expect that moderators have the ability to see who up/downvoted which post and will be able to determine from that a pretty good idea of who's gaming the system and who isn't. At least I think that's the case. I have no idea how moderation works on this site yet.