The power of Like: Is a blog post popular just because it's popular?

To help answer that question, researchers led by MIT came up with an experiment to manipulate reader comments, The New York Times reports:

“The experiment performed a subtle, random change on the ratings of comments submitted on the site over five months: right after each comment was made, it was given an arbitrary up or down vote, or — for a control group — left alone. 

“The first person reading the comment was 32 percent more likely to give it an up vote if it had been already given a fake positive score. There was no change in the likelihood of subsequent negative votes. Over time, the comments with the artificial initial up vote ended with scores 25 percent higher than those in the control group.” 

One researcher said the test shows how "very small signals of social influence snowballed into behaviors like herding.”  

You can read the entire story here.