system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 why reddit auto-downvotes?

**Answered**:   
>It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not.
If they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it.
>However, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program.
>So put simply:
>It constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection.


 *Thanks guys*
gpt
It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not.

If they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it. 

However, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program. 

So put simply:

It constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection.