So following up, since the admins are currently talking about a vote manipulation case thats kind of fascinating…

Someone was a victim of a mass downvote attack and that got on the admins radar.

Pulling the database data, they found 20 some odd accounts that appear to upvote one particular user, and, at least in this case, downvoted another.

All the accounts were random combinations of letters and numbers. They have no content other than the up and down votes.

Several of them have sign up email addresses with the same domain as the upvoted user. There are also some shared IP addresses as well.

I expect there will be a mass ban event here shortly if it’s not already happening.