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What if a group of users believes and behaves similarly, without coördinating amongst themselves?

Should that be prevented? It's not really distinguishable from the scenario you prevented.

Like-minded people acting independently have a very different signature from organized campaigns of brigades and sock puppets.

Independent actors are far less correlated than centrally orchestrated groups.

Having seen many discussions about whether some group is a brigade of sock puppets or not, the signature of like-minded people acting independently is that they hold views that the person judging them agrees with, whereas anyone who holds views they dislike is clearly a brigade of sock puppets. This seems to hold across the board, and judging based on how "correlated" they are doesn't change this because everyone is biased towards thinking of people who're like them as more diverse in viewpoint and outsiders as all alike.

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