I recently shared a blog post I had written to a relevant subreddit. I've posted to this subreddit a few times and got good responses.

My most recent post had a response on it when I checked it in the morning (I usually post just before I go to sleep) that insinuated I had engaged in some kind of vote manipulation due to how well the post had been performing in terms of upvotes and the lack of any other comments at the time of their comment.

The post has since received more comments that are responses to the actual blog post.

I found it unfortunate that this comment would be waiting there for all the other people who came to comment on the post so I wanted to respond to it .

The problem I had was that I can't prove that I didn't engage in vote manipulation. It would benefit me to do so as it would get more people looking at my post and aware of who I am (or so the hypothetical reasoning could go). Additionally, if I tried to defend myself against the claim I would only make myself seem more suspicious. I also don't want to leave the comment unanswered as I believe it gives the wrong idea about not only my character, but also the quality of the blog post I shared (since I didn't do any vote manipulation it would appear that it is doing well on its own merits!). So how could I respond to such an unfalsifiable claim without seeming suspiciously defensive and maintaining a good face?

Note that there aren't any ads on my blog site and the content is all free. I was also surprised at how well the post performed, most of my other posts didn't do quite so well so I can understand it looking like a suspicious outlier.

I recently shared a blog post I had written to a relevant subreddit. I've posted to this subreddit a few times and got good responses.

My most recent post had a response on it when I checked it in the morning (I usually post just before I go to sleep) that insinuated I had engaged in some kind of vote manipulation due to how well the post had been performing in terms of upvotes and the lack of any other comments at the time of their comment.

The post has since received more comments that are responses to the actual blog post. However, the accusatory comment has received some amount of support and is the second most upvoted comment (which means it will feature fairly prominently when people view the reddit comments), beating out relevant comments.

I found it unfortunate that this comment would be waiting there for all the other people who came to comment on the post so I wanted to respond to it .

The problem I had was that I can't prove that I didn't engage in vote manipulation. It would benefit me to do so as it would get more people looking at my post and aware of who I am (or so the hypothetical reasoning could go). Additionally, if I tried to defend myself against the claim I would only make myself seem more suspicious. I also don't want to leave the comment unanswered as I believe it gives the wrong idea about not only my character, but also the quality of the blog post I shared (since I didn't do any vote manipulation it would appear that it is doing well on its own merits!). So how could I respond to such an unfalsifiable claim without seeming suspiciously defensive and maintaining a good face?

Note that there aren't any ads on my blog site and the content is all free. I was also surprised at how well the post performed, most of my other posts didn't do quite so well so I can understand it looking like a suspicious outlier.