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Researchers Show How Easy It Is To Manipulate Online Opinions

Posted by samzenpus on from the yes-we're-all-individuals dept.

jcatcw writes "A recent study shows that a single random up-vote, randomly chosen, created a herding behavior in ratings that resulted in a 25% increase in the ratings but the negative manipulation had no effect. An intuitive explanation for this asymmetry is that we tend to go along with the positive opinions of others, but we tend to be skeptical of the negative opinions of others, and so we go in and correct what we think is an injustice. The third major result was that these effects varied by topic. So in business and society, culture, politics, we found substantial susceptibility to positive herding, whereas in general news, economics, IT, we found no such herding effects in the positive or negative direction."

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OK by alphatel · · Score: 5, Funny

    +1

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  2. Why I moderate the way I do by techno-vampire · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I have mod points, I look for posts that haven't been moderated at all. I figure that once a post's been modded up, there are lots of people who will mod it up further, if appropriate (or just from the herd instinct) so I save my points for posts that haven't been noticed before.

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    Good, inexpensive web hosting
  3. Microsoft and SCO are Good! by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    just testing the theory...

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    Table-ized A.I.
  4. Re:Slashdot members knows this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    sorry girlintraining,

    I have read many of your comments. Sometimes they are great and insightful constructed logically such that even if you disagree you can understand it is genuinely constructive, earning you heaps of karma,

    Sometimes you say some pretty heavily debated shit. No doubt burning your karma to the ground.

    Basically, the reason you flip-flop on karma, is because you flip-flop in the quality of your comments. Not because you told an apple fanboy that apple didn't invent the tablet.