Seemingly widespread ratings manipulation

[ThatNewGuy]

And apologies if I missed an earlier thread on this same subject.

You can view the other thread here, if you're interested.

I'm sorry that your stories have been impacted. As I recall, you had several in the top ten, many of which I've read and enjoyed.

The only stories left hovering above 4.84 now are those with thousands of votes, but it seems only a matter of time before they are bumped down to the same score.

 

[boytoyjoy]

I barely even look at those ratings since they usually have no resemblance to my own reaction to a story. I mostly do tags search and look at the titles and blurbs. Plus I some favorite authors whose pages I check for new stories now and then. I don't remember ever leaving a rating. Sometimes I leave a comment. I should do that more often since authors like getting them.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Yeah - the only people who think it’s natural / random are like this:

View attachment 2616744

Fun fact: Ostriches don't actually stick their heads in the sand.

This random animal fact has been brought to you by a weirdo

 

[SugarStorm]

The only stories left hovering above 4.84 now are those with thousands of votes, but it seems only a matter of time before they are bumped down to the same score.

Within Lesbian Sex, the goalposts already seem to be moving.

About a week ago (maybe two) there was a noticeable shift where a large batch of stories dropped from 4.84 to 4.83. These were stories with thousands of votes that had been sitting comfortably at 4.84 for quite some time.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Fun fact: Ostriches don't actually stick their heads in the sand.

This random animal fact has been brought to you by a weirdo

It’s a metaphorical ostrich - we good now ?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Within Lesbian Sex, the goalposts already seem to be moving.

About a week ago (maybe two) there was a noticeable shift where a large batch of stories dropped from 4.84 to 4.83. These were stories with thousands of votes that had been sitting comfortably at 4.84 for quite some time.

But hey, it’s just random - the math says so…

 

[anthrodisiac]

It’s a metaphorical ostrich - we good now ?

We were good before! Are we not good?

 

[EmilyMiller]

We were good before! Are we not good?

How about we make it a metaphorical Gallimimus?

 

[anthrodisiac]

It’s a metaphorical ostrich - we good now ?

Also, even if it's metaphorical, it's still an inaccurate characterization of ostriches, which have been unfairly maligned by silly Romans.

How about we make it a metaphorical Gallimimus?

Those fuckers for sure buried their head in the sand. Assholes taking my lunch money 70 million years ago

 

[boytoyjoy]

Manipulation seems clear enough but, without having much of a clue about any of this, I’m baffled why anyone would care enough to do this?

Never underestimate the persistence of trolls with too much time on their hands.

 

[RejectReality]

Why 4.84 specifically?

Because that happens to be the level where the stories with that score have too many votes to knock down to 4.83. They'll get there eventually, and everything else will be 4.83 or less until the big fish get knocked down to 4.82.

It's the same as it's always been, except there are no large sample, deep-cutting sweeps running anymore to serve as a bulwark against the toplist manipulation.

 

[onehitwanda]

Because that happens to be the level where the stories with that score have too many votes to knock down to 4.83. They'll get there eventually, and everything else will be 4.83 or less until the big fish get knocked down to 4.82.

It's the same as it's always been, except there are no large sample, deep-cutting sweeps running anymore to serve as a bulwark against the toplist manipulation.

Sweeps were only ever a very naive, brute-force approach to the problem. There is no simple method to identify a group of hostile actors who are manipulating scores in a non-trivial manner, and the only realistic methods to guard against it would alienate a large portion of the readership. The site makes money off traffic; traffic is generated by new stories, not by the rating of the existing story corpus.

It's a rigged game, but it's the only game in town.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't dispute that it is happening, but I am seeing no proof that it is due to the nefarious efforts of some bad actors. It's too system wide and accompanied by too many other oddities that all began around the same time last August.

One obvious example is in the top list for Novels/Novellas. Why is there a 1,458 vote gap between numbers 11 and 12?

The top lists are screwed up. Why can't we just leave it at that?

 

[TheLobster]

The top lists are screwed up. Why can't we just leave it at that?

Because how else will we collect wounds, that hurt our fragile egos and narcissistic prides, and then parade around them looking for every scrap of validation and pity?

Come on, you've been around here long enough to know that your ask is just not feasible

 

[sirhugs]

Because how else will we collect wounds, that hurt our fragile egos and narcissistic prides, and then parade around them looking for every scrap of validation and pity?

Come on, you've been around here long enough to know that your ask is just not feasible

I'd accuse you of talking about me

but lord knows, I have no pride, narcisstic or otherwise. The fragile ego, need for validation and pity, yup... but IRL, I have lived with a chronic would for seven years now, so can't identify with wanting to collect more. Trust me, it ain't fun and games.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Manipulation seems clear enough but, without having much of a clue about any of this, I’m baffled why anyone would care enough to do this?

Wouldn’t it take quite a lot of work to arrange? Without any kind of financial reward?

Or are the people who are being maintained at the top of these lists making money off their writing elsewhere and being featured prominently here helps with that?

Or am I just underestimating the human ego?

When you stop and think about it, it's all about asking the right questions, and the answer will present itself.

What are the right questions?


Who has the motive to do this? Who gains from this?

Why 4.84?

Who has the means to do it?


We've often speculated here that it's a person or a group of persons influencing the scores in order to push their favorite authors to the top. But does that really make sense?

Each of you can ask yourself: Do you really care that much to do something on this scale?
More than that, even if you are that kind of a fanatic, I don't know anyone here who cares about ALL the categories on Lit. I'd maybe buy this theory if only a couple of categories were affected. But it's every single category, and they are all being flattened to the SAME arbitrary value. There is no Lit zealot who cares about all the kinks and categories.

When we get to the last question, that's when things become truly clear, in my opinion. For an ordinary user to achieve something on this scale, excellent technical skills are required and a dedicated machine and software. Basically, the software would need to access the score page of all these stories, cast votes, and then keep changing the IP through a VPN and do it all over again, and again, and again, ad infinitum.

There are stories with thousands of votes, even tens of thousands of votes, and to affect them, an immense number of votes is needed. On top of that, such a large-scale undertaking would easily get detected by the website admins. The same IP casting thousands of votes in a short amount of time? Yeah right.

Wait, maybe it's some competitor doing this to harm Lit? But how exactly are they harming Lit with this huge endeavour? How does reducing top scores from, say, 4.93 to 4.85 harm Lit in any way? This one makes the least sense to me.


And finally, we get to the most obvious culprit - Literotica itself.

They obviously have the means to do this. Instead of needing a massive undertaking to cast votes and to change IPs, they can do all of this with a single database query.

Clearly, they've done this with many small-scale queries instead, as scores haven't dropped instantly. They have been dropping slowly for a while, and it's possible that they will continue to drop. Lit admins are the ONLY ones who could achieve this without using considerable time and resources.

The tricky part, of course, is why? Why would Lit do this?

My best guess is that they did it to let other, newer stories a chance to get to the top. Some stories have been sitting up there for years, and due to the number of votes, they were often unassailable, especially when you take into account those zealous readers who love influencing vulnerable top list entries that have a few hundred votes only.

Most of you will remember that on the category page, when you get to the POPULAR STORIES for that category, the window used to display stories from the all-time top list, which means stories with a hundred votes minimum. Now it shows top-scoring stories from that category regardless of the number of votes.

That change was clearly done out of the desire to shuffle the stories more often and to give a chance to other authors to get exposure. It's a change that hints at what happened to the all-time top lists.


It's not easy to speculate about these things, of course, but when you put two and two together, the answer does present itself. It's not a perfect one, but in comparison to all the other theories, it makes the most sense by far.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Each of you can ask yourself: Do you really care that much to do something on this scale?

We have ample examples of obsessive behavior here.

More than that, even if you are that kind of a fanatic, I don't know anyone here who cares about ALL the categories on Lit.

It’s not all categories.

I think it seems to be attractive to some the idea of blaming people other than our peers. The site, reader fab clubs, etc. The answer to who cares enough about ratings is very obviously authors.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

When you stop and think about it, it's all about asking the right questions, and the answer will present itself.

What are the right questions?


Who has the motive to do this? Who gains from this?

Why 4.84?

Who has the means to do it?


We've often speculated here that it's a person or a group of persons influencing the scores in order to push their favorite authors to the top. But does that really make sense?

Each of you can ask yourself: Do you really care that much to do something on this scale?
More than that, even if you are that kind of a fanatic, I don't know anyone here who cares about ALL the categories on Lit. I'd maybe buy this theory if only a couple of categories were affected. But it's every single category, and they are all being flattened to the SAME arbitrary value. There is no Lit zealot who cares about all the kinks and categories.

When we get to the last question, that's when things become truly clear, in my opinion. For an ordinary user to achieve something on this scale, excellent technical skills are required and a dedicated machine and software. Basically, the software would need to access the score page of all these stories, cast votes, and then keep changing the IP through a VPN and do it all over again, and again, and again, ad infinitum.

There are stories with thousands of votes, even tens of thousands of votes, and to affect them, an immense number of votes is needed. On top of that, such a large-scale undertaking would easily get detected by the website admins. The same IP casting thousands of votes in a short amount of time? Yeah right.

Wait, maybe it's some competitor doing this to harm Lit? But how exactly are they harming Lit with this huge endeavour? How does reducing top scores from, say, 4.93 to 4.85 harm Lit in any way? This one makes the least sense to me.


And finally, we get to the most obvious culprit - Literotica itself.

They obviously have the means to do this. Instead of needing a massive undertaking to cast votes and to change IPs, they can do all of this with a single database query.

Clearly, they've done this with many small-scale queries instead, as scores haven't dropped instantly. They have been dropping slowly for a while, and it's possible that they will continue to drop. Lit admins are the ONLY ones who could achieve this without using considerable time and resources.

The tricky part, of course, is why? Why would Lit do this?

My best guess is that they did it to let other, newer stories a chance to get to the top. Some stories have been sitting up there for years, and due to the number of votes, they were often unassailable, especially when you take into account those zealous readers who love influencing vulnerable top list entries that have a few hundred votes only.

Most of you will remember that on the category page, when you get to the POPULAR STORIES for that category, the window used to display stories from the all-time top list, which means stories with a hundred votes minimum. Now it shows top-scoring stories from that category regardless of the number of votes.

That change was clearly done out of the desire to shuffle the stories more often and to give a chance to other authors to get exposure. It's a change that hints at what happened to the all-time top lists.


It's not easy to speculate about these things, of course, but when you put two and two together, the answer does present itself. It's not a perfect one, but in comparison to all the other theories, it makes the most sense by far.

A very astute, Solomon-like post.

Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of tinfoil hats coming off as a result.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

We have ample examples of obsessive behavior here.

It’s not all categories.

I think it seems to be attractive to some the idea of blaming people other than our peers. The site, reader fab clubs, etc. The answer to who cares enough about ratings is very obviously authors.

As I mentioned above (#38), it's not just the scores on the top lists that are screwed up. There are other oddities that would be almost impossible for a bad actor to create and maintain.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

We have ample examples of obsessive behavior here.

It’s not all categories.

How is it not all the categories? Even Reviews and Essays is affected in the exact same way.

I think it seems to be attractive to some the idea of blaming people other than our peers. The site, reader fab clubs, etc. The answer to who cares enough about ratings is very obviously authors.

How can any individual author achieve something like this? And why wouldn't Lit admins react to such a large-scale attack on their website?

 

[SugarStorm]

My best guess is that they did it to let other, newer stories a chance to get to the top. Some stories have been sitting up there for years, and due to the number of votes, they were often unassailable, especially when you take into account those zealous readers who love influencing vulnerable top list entries that have a few hundred votes only.

So your theory is that the Top Lists are being quietly reshuffled through systematic downvoting because LitHQ isn’t happy with how their own rating algorithm is presenting submissions?

If we have an All Time Top List, I feel like that should, by definition, cater to the giants of old. That seems reasonable enough. Right now we’ve got:

1. Last 30 days
2. Last 12 months
3. All time

If the goal is increased exposure, there are cleaner ways to achieve that. Add a 36-month list. A 48-month list. Rotate spotlight features. Even something like promoting newer authors or lesser-seen works directly.

I don’t know, maybe I’m misunderstanding your point? I just feel like if this is about exposure, there are a lot of other levers to pull before nudging the numbers themselves.

 

[EmilyMiller]

How is it not all the categories? Even Reviews and Essays is affected in the exact same way.

I stand corrected - none of my R&E get to the lofty heights of 100 votes

How can any individual author achieve something like this?

Automation - I’ve suffered from the manual version of this for a long time. Around October 2025 it became industrial.

And why wouldn't Lit admins react to such a large-scale attack on their website?

And you are asking this ? You of all people?

What on earth is the benefit to the site and why take such a draconian approach when you could achieve the same end in much easier ways?

 

[EmilyMiller]

So your theory is that the Top Lists are being quietly reshuffled through systematic downvoting because LitHQ isn’t happy with how their own rating algorithm is presenting submissions?

Not a sus premise at all…

 

[Imstillfun]

As someone who often gets over 1k votes per story the only manipulation I’ve seen is 1* bombing. I used to have at least 5 hall of fame stories. 1 week someone (someones?) went in and downvoted them all, they dropped within 3 days. I don’t believe LitHQ has time to review the scores. I think they used to go in and look for 1* bombing but gave, that up.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

So your theory is that the Top Lists are being quietly reshuffled through systematic downvoting because LitHQ isn’t happy with how their own rating algorithm is presenting submissions?

If we have an All Time Top List, I feel like that should, by definition, cater to the giants of old. That seems reasonable enough. Right now we’ve got:

1. Last 30 days
2. Last 12 months
3. All time

If the goal is increased exposure, there are cleaner ways to achieve that. Add a 36-month list. A 48-month list. Rotate spotlight features. Even something like promoting newer authors or lesser-seen works directly.

I don’t know, maybe I’m misunderstanding your point? I just feel like if this is about exposure, there are a lot of other levers to pull before nudging the numbers themselves.

Guessing the motive is always the tricky part. Maybe there are even some technical reasons for doing this, who knows? And I agree that they could have increased the exposure in some other way, without affecting the scores themselves. There is a lot of guessing we are doing when it comes to why.

But again, I am convinced they are the only ones who had both the means and a motive to do this in such a statistically uniform way across the categories. I am certain no reader/author would be able to achieve something like this or would even have a motive to do it this way. This approach doesn't favor anyone individually.

A pair of 1* bombs for certain stories and authors? For those who loudmouth on the forum? Yeah, that's individuals and butthurt people and zealots for sure.