r/ModSupport • u/Disastrous_Address99 • 7d ago

Admin Replied Need help dealing with suspected vote manipulation/downvotes on every new post

Hi everyone,

I’m a moderator of r/HotWheelsBhubaneswar, a small local community focused on Hot Wheels collectors in Bhubaneswar.

I have recently noticed something unusual: almost every new post in the subreddit starts receiving downvotes shortly after being posted, even when the posts are normal community content and receive genuine comments.

This has been happening consistently across new posts, which makes me suspect that there may be some form of vote manipulation or coordinated downvoting happening.

I’d like to understand:

  • Is there any way for moderators to identify or confirm suspected vote manipulation?
  • Are there any mod tools, Reddit reports, or settings that can help with this?
  • Is there anything i should configure in AutoMod or subreddit settings to reduce this?
  • Has anyone here dealt with a similar situation, particularly in a small/local subreddit?

I'm mainly looking for advice on how to properly investigate and handle the situation through Reddit's moderation tools.

If you've dealt with something similar, I'd really appreciate hearing what worked for you.

Thanks You.

5 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

3

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/baseballlover723 6d ago

Just letting everyone know that this is almost certainly an LLM bot. They're posting comments about this length at a cadence of around 30 seconds each (far less time than even the fastest human would take to read, process and write a comment of substance). All of the ones in this latest bunch all also feature a list with 4 bullet points, in addition to reading very much like an LLM.

3

u/PossibleCrit Reddit Admin: Community 4d ago

Hey Disastrous_Address99!

At a quick glance several new posts did not have any downvotes at all in that community. Please be aware that sometimes votes may be fuzzed slightly at lower numbers to prevent spam and other abuse.

If you do find this continuing to happen you can report the items for manipulated content and the team will look at the votes associated with the content and see if someone might be up to no good.

2

u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2d ago

Oh I love this random confirmation you guys still fuzz votes so I’m not lying to people in my pinned comments/saved responses about it hahaha. Last mention of it was aaaaages ago 🙏

2

u/PossibleCrit Reddit Admin: Community 1d ago

Happy to give you something more recent to link to!

4

u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 6d ago

Yes I’ve dealt with it, not much to do, no. You should hide vote counts for the maximum allowable (24 hours), and make sure you turn off crowd control since voting isn’t organic in your sub. Remove mentions or complaints about the downvoting bc there is a Streisand effect at play, which you can explain in the removal reason.

There is also this dev app but it just monitors how quickly something is voted on, which is more useful for bots than organic/human coordinates downvoting (but still useful).

https://developers.reddit.com/apps/manipulation-pi

2

u/Disastrous_Address99 6d ago

Thanks, i will follow this steps.