I've noticed instant voting on comments submitted lately. As in click submit on comment, immediately go to profile and check the score on it. Appears to be damn near instant (<2sec even on long comments) so its not a human. Mostly up, sometimes down.
Voting bots are nothing new of course, but I don't recall seeing visible bot action on hn before that I could see with my own eyes. Plus the both up & down suggest some sort of logic driving it - even if crude.
Anybody else notice this?
The Nautilus link that made it to the front page several days ago deeply disturbed me [1]. From a grumpy technical standpoint it did not have TLS by default or even a redirect.
More concerning though was that it was a SPONSORED advertorial that only ran because a fee was paid. Anyone who pointed this out was downvoted as the post accrued hundreds of upvotes and comments.
[1] - http://oceans.nautil.us/