If this worked reliably at these prices, it would be trivial to burn the accounts behind it: you'd just buy upvotes (cheaply, it turns out!) for a marginal story and watch who votes for it. It's most probably a scam, feeding on people who themselves hope to scam the site.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
If this worked reliably at these prices, it would be trivial to burn the accounts behind it: you'd just buy upvotes (cheaply, it turns out!) for a marginal story and watch who votes for it. It's most probably a scam, feeding on people who themselves hope to scam the site.