PSA: Reddit Upvotes do not register for some accounts.

[jasondenzer]

I made a previous post about my old account not registering its upvotes. However, this is happening to a lot of people. While mostly everyone on this subforum uses Reddit for OnlyFans Marketing, I am one of the few that use accounts for personal upvoting. Some of you might have accounts that upvote your OFM posts. Or even buy Upvote Services.

Recently, Reddit has been stripping accounts from their ability to upvote, even legitimate accounts that never used bots/AI. This is even stealthier than the dreaded shadowban. In fact, you cannot submit an appeal on Reddit.com/Appeal just because you lost the ability to vote.

I thought this only affected bot accounts or new unwarmed accounts that touched a bad IP address but nope. Many real legitimate and even established users are experiencing this same problem. There have been a few Reddit threads in the last few months addressing this:

- Exhibit A - Moderated many Subreddits, 300k+ total karma, 20k contributions, 5 years old
- Exhibit B - 92k+ karma, 16k+ contributions, 5 years old
- Exhibit C - 37k+ karma, 10k+ contributions, 1 year old

Feel free to Google up “Reddit Upvotes don’t register (or count)” and you’ll find a lot of posts from less than 6 months ago.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents

• What do accounts normally require to upvote?
• Is this Vote Fuzzing? How do I know I have lost my ability to upvote?
• What are possible triggers for vote suppression?
• The solution?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do accounts normally require to upvote?

Unlocking the ability to upvote is relatively simple. Account has to be:

• Not be shadowbanned or suspended. Not banned from the particular Subreddit.
• Older than a few days old.
• Has at least a few comment karma.
• Be subscribed to a Subreddit OR have gained comment karma in that particular Subreddit at any point in time. You can still upvote posts on a community you never joined. For comments, you must meet either or both conditions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this Vote Fuzzing? How do I know I have lost my ability to upvote?

If you post this exact problem on Reddit, everyone will assume it’s Reddit’s vote fuzzing algorithm. It occurs when Reddit randomly refreshes the score, generally as a deterrent to bots. However, it's a fairly predictable algorithm.

Vote fuzzing generally occurs when a comment or post has at least a few total votes in it. It seems like vote fuzzing only shows on the Old Reddit UI while the new Reddit always shows the same score for some reason. Additionally, vote fuzzing does not occur for posts/comments that were 1 point 100% upvoted (ie nobody voted).

Here’s my debugging strategy. Before debugging, make sure the account meets the standards normally required to upvote (see previous section).

For Posts:

• Upvote a few random posts on a dead Subreddit that had 1 point & 100% upvoted prior to your vote. This can be done on a big subreddit, as all it takes is just 1 refresh to see.
• Refresh the page (incognito not needed).
• If you see the score is 2, you’re good. On the Old Reddit UI, you’ll see 2 points 100% upvoted. Otherwise, your vote did not register.

For Comments:

• With comments, you must test this on a Subreddit you either subscribed to or have gained comment karma at any point in time.
• You want to pick a comment that people will likely not upvote/downvote because you cannot see the score and percentage upvoted. I’d go to a post at least 24+ hours old and a comment that has a score of 1. Usually a sub-comment reply to another comment.
• Same thing as you did with posts. You can also try marking down the comment karma on an Incognito tab. Usually, if the vote counted, it would comment that karma increased. Or it would’ve ranked up the sort ahead of scores the sea of 1 point score comments.
• For comments, you may need multiple test cases.

I have done hundreds of different test cases and have noticed the difference between a vote fuzz and a banned voter. You don’t need to wait a few hours or days. It's worth noting that Reddit occasionally has a site-wide bug to all users where they are delayed of voting so just about everything is stuck at 1. However, what I tested is clearly not the case.

Below are attachments for both posts and comments using both old and new UI.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What are possible triggers for vote suppression?

It’s unknown and even shadowbans are more predictable. Anyone can lose their ability to vote at any given time. However, here’s what I learned so far:

• New accounts are more susceptible to losing their ability to upvote after 2 days or so. They might have unlocked the ability to upvote at first but after another ~24 hours, they lose it. In some cases, when a new account then makes a comment after losing the ability to vote, they are hit immediately with a shadowban. A possible way to tell if the account is on the chopping block is check and see if the comment is automatically collapsed on the new Reddit UI. It only works if the subreddit has minimal crowd control settings.
• Aged/old empty accounts, even after warming this up for a few days, will likely never gain the ability to vote. That’s despite having a high Contibutive Quality Score (CQS), verified email, and no triggers of shadowban.

I don’t know what exactly triggers this for established and active accounts. Recently, one of my 9 month old accounts that were constantly active with no ban/suspension record, was recently vote suppressed. No shadowban occurred.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The solution?

At this moment, I don’t know the solution. I guess it’s easy to just throw those accounts away but if you’ve spent lots of time warming the account and buying PVA GMail accounts to verify, it probably isn’t worth restarting.

I’ve tried the following but it DOES NOT WORK:

• Increasing CQS. I had an account with High CQS yet votes did not register.
• Increasing comment karma. I’ve gained a lot of karma yet did nothing.
• Verifying email. Email verification didn’t help much either.
• Good IP. It’s hard to tell what is a good IP according to Reddit. Many IP score websites will tell you it’s a safe IP yet Reddit may flag it. Or even if Reddit didn’t flag the IP, it’s not going to restore the ability.

It’s quite possible that if you spend a few days not voting at all, the powers will be restored, at least according to one of the posts I shared. I cannot confirm whether this is the case or not.

I hope we as BHW users will know a lot better than your average Reddit user. If anyone discovers the recovery strategy, please feel free to share.

 

[shijin]

I’ve seen this hit accounts that never touched OFM or automation, which makes it feel algorithmic, not behavioral

 

[gZaw]

Bump.

What anti-detect are you using. What proxies? And when you say aged accounts, are you buying from specific vendors or using your own?

 

[jasondenzer]

Bump.

What anti-detect are you using. What proxies? And when you say aged accounts, are you buying from specific vendors or using your own?

I'm using Dolpin Anti-detect. And Proxies I use are residential sticky proxies of 1h-24h sessions. I usually grow my own accounts. I don't buy pre-established accounts.

 

[upvotelift]

Are you using good proxy provider? If your IP changes mid session, you're done. I would star there.

 

[jasondenzer]

Are you using good proxy provider? If your IP changes mid session, you're done. I would star there.

YES. I'm using good proxies. I double checked and triple checked them. The issue isn't the proxy quality.

---------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: It seems like after almost a month, 2 of my accounts that lost their ability to upvote actually regained it for some reason. There doesn't seem to be a magic trick. Just wait it out. I guess if you don't see it change after a month, then it may likely mean it's permanently gone. So 1 month rule?

 

[itsme75]

YES. I'm using good proxies. I double checked and triple checked them. The issue isn't the proxy quality.

---------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: It seems like after almost a month, 2 of my accounts that lost their ability to upvote actually regained it for some reason. There doesn't seem to be a magic trick. Just wait it out. I guess if you don't see it change after a month, then it may likely mean it's permanently gone. So 1 month rule?

I'm seeing the same, and exactly how you described it.

Another way thing I'm noticing is that Reddit is introducing a different ordering of comments. Sometimes even a comment will show a lot of comments, but it's ordering is with comments of lower upvotes. This is especially noticeable on older threads, but seems to be happening on new threaders too. I would bet all of this is for Reddit to try to combat upvote buying.

 

[moonlighsunligh]

Yeah it is impossible to upvote now. No matter what post, bot sure how are people still getting some upvotes.