That's not quite accurate, but even if it were, there are easy ways to improve that bit of software if people start abusing it.

You're right that most such software tricks, especially anti-abuse measures, need to be secret in order to stay working.

> That's not quite accurate, but even if it were, there are easy ways to improve that bit of software if people start abusing it.

How easy it would be for bad actors brigading with freshly created accounts, or not-so-freshly created accounts with a history of brigading, to abuse this feature to censor stories?

I think I already answered this but I'll put it a different way: (1) not as easy as it sounds; (2) it would be easy to tell that they were doing it; (3) if they do it, we'll improve the software so they can't; (4) if that doesn't work, it's a minor feature and we can easily drop it.

Serious question: does flagging it as dupe by software automatically remove it? Or does a mod need to click a button at this point?

He posted elsewhere that a mod has to approve it but they may glance at it without tons of focus