What is going on with this board? Are the up votes genuine?

[earlydays]

Can someone from Fitbit explain what is going on here...

I made a post on this board yesterday, and to my surprise, within minutes, when I viewed my post it said it already had 8 up votes.

Wow, that was fast. Had I hit on an issue that chimed with others? I first thought those up votes must have been for my previous posts, but nope, all my previous posts had zero up votes, and the 8 votes were showing at the bottom of this brand new post.

I was a little surprised, as, iirc, it said this new post had only had 2 views so far at that time. But ok I figured, it's probably just a delay updating the stats.

Imagine my disappointment over the next almost 12 hours when only 3 more up votes appeared. Maybe my post didn't chime with that many others after all.

But, hmmm, what's the chance that most of the people with whom my issue seemingly chimed, just happened to be logged on and reading posts within minutes of me posting! What are the odds of that?

Curious, I dug a little deeper. This site shows you who up voted your post, and if you click through it also tells you their "Date Last Visited". 

Puzzlingly, some of those 8 upvotes for a post that I made yesterday, were from people who seemingly "last visited" 2 or 3 years ago.

So in summary ... more up votes appearing than apparent views at the time, the majority appearing within a very short space of time immediately after posting, and from people who apparently last visited this site a long while ago....

What is going on? 

The up vote numbers feel to me about as trustable as the data from my charge 5 at the moment!

[earlydays]

I updated the list ...

... after I took this screen shot of the up votes on the post...

So that appears to be 7 up votes from 4 views ... and most of those 4 views were probably me checking my own post!

I presume that 'eye' icon is referring to how many have viewed the post?

[LZeeW]

@earlydays   Fitbit is very aware of these bot votes and is trying hard to stop them.  Yes, that 4 next to the eye are the number of views, but those are probably real users.  Many of these bot votes show up immediately after posting, so they aren't coming from real people.

BTW, my personal record is 48 bot votes on a single post.  If you tap on that down arrow in a circle in the upper right of any of any post, there are several options, including who voted for your post.  I recognize several of the bot names that vote for me.

[earlydays]

Thank you for the reply.

Interesting that it's already something known.

Though my initial response to that would be that Fitbit can't be trying that hard to fix it.

Surely they could automatically reject any attempt to upvote from any user who hasn't actually viewed the post they want to up vote? That's surely a big give-away that the up vote isn't genuine.

I'm also sceptical what purpose anyone running third party bots would have to want to up vote posts on here, presumably almost at random?

[earlydays]

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@LZeeW wrote:

... Fitbit is very aware of these bot votes and is trying hard to stop them.  ...

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I would also add/expand on my previous reply..

Fitbit should easily be able to detect these by looking for...

• Up votes when the user hasn't viewed the associated post
• Up votes when the user last visited a long time ago - why count an up vote from a user who hasn't visited?

Those should be clear give aways to the bots.

• And if Fitbit were serious, you'd think they'd close those user accounts automatically.

But some of those up voting my posts last visited the site in 2019! Some may have only started to auto-up vote recently, but they've still given >100 up votes since their last visit, and the accounts are still open. 

I don't believe Fitbit can be trying all that hard to combat the issue.

I'll be totally honest, my first suspicion (just suspicion, I can't prove it) was to think Fitbit themselves could be doing it to keep (real) users engaged. Similar to how some dating sites are believed to have sent fake positive responses to users to make them feel people are interested in them, to keep them hooked.

Either way, intentional from Fitbit or not, I'm not convinced Fitbit are doing much to combat it.

Look at it this way : Even if they are genuinely from 3rd party bots, to anyone viewing the boards, or anyone posting who hasn't realised the up votes are fake, it all gives a greater impression of positivity, engagement, and community.

Why would Fitbit put much effort into countering that? It works in their favour - until people realise, but I guess Fitbit will either delete this thread shortly or it'll just disappear down the post list into oblivion and be forgotten, so either way, most visitors will continue to remain blissfully unaware. Those of us that become aware will probably just give up and move on.

Anyhow...

All things considered... the doubts I have about my Charge 5's heart rate readings, the poor built in GPS, and now what I'm seeing on these boards when I come here to try to find out whether my unit is faulty or that's just how they are, ... well, this was my first Fitbit device, and first fitness tracker of any sort, and I'm not impressed at all with the Fitbit reality - both the product itself and this community website associated with it.