I used to be a lot on r/travel. Back then there were posts with pictures that had upvote ls in the triple to quadruple digit range. There were also user questions, usually in the double digits.
Now the majority is just discussions that mysteriously have thousands of upvotes. And some of them quite boring. That must be bots or fakes directly by reddit. No way this happens naturally.
Is this common practice now or is that something r/travel did specifically?
It's not just common, it's the entire basis of the platform.
Every dumb fucking talking point they want their users to regurgitate in the real world goes to the moon. Speak the truth and be silenced.
It's a nightmare platform.
Which is funny if you have a home computer and two people upvote the same thing from different accounts on it. Mods will absolutely drop a ban hammer.