Vote Manipulation

Vote manipulation is any attempt to artificially influence the up- or down-votes on Reddit content rather than letting voting reflect genuine, organic opinion. It includes using multiple or fake accounts to vote on one's own or others' submissions, buying votes, employing bots or scripts, and asking or organizing groups of people to vote a particular way (the overlap with brigading). Because Reddit's ranking and visibility depend heavily on vote scores, manipulation distorts what users see and undermines the authenticity of the platform's signal of community interest.

Reddit treats vote manipulation as a violation of its Content Policy under the prohibition on cheating and content manipulation. The platform detects it through a mix of automated systems, moderator reports, and user reports submitted via a webform, looking for patterns such as sudden vote-velocity spikes, clustered account behavior, and votes arriving immediately after a link is shared off-site. Consequences range from votes being silently discounted to temporary account restrictions, with repeated or severe violations leading to longer suspensions. Moderators cannot see who voted and so cannot enforce this directly; sitewide vote manipulation is handled by Reddit's administrators. The rule applies even to seemingly minor acts such as upvoting your own posts from a second account.