Sometimes, I'll hit the back button in the middle of an article to altruistically upvote it, but often, I'll upvote based on other signals even though I don't end up reading the articles.
For example, I looked at my history just now. I upvoted
"Solid – A set of conventions and tools for decentralized social applications (mit.edu)"
because MIT + Bootstrap Page + Tim Berners-Lee = Upvote
In retrospect, that was the extent of the mental calculus I did. I did not read the article and don't know what Solid is.
Would HN vote buttons that detected a third-party cookie and reduced the friction to vote off HN (like Facebook Like buttons) mitigate this? Or, do you all generally upvote what you read and vice-versa?