how the hell does paywalled content possibly get upvoted more than downvoted. are there really that many economist.com subscribers here?
I think the stats on interactions across the board are probably ridiculous though.
I wish for a HN, reddit, etc, where you have to vote and comment to even be served more content.
The comments you upvote/downvote are used to calculate your "opinion similarity" to the owners. Then your upvote/downvotes are modulated by that similarity. It's a way of using other humans to amplify the opinions of the owners -- they don't have time to read all the comments, so instead they filter out those who think the same way they do and let them do it.
As someone who likely has many different opinions from people from those of people at Y Combinator, this seems wrong.