Other people's vote counts are invisible because they led to constant bickering about the merits of any given comment's "spot" vote count (this is also the reason there's a guideline that asks you not to write these kinds of comments, but changing the affordances so you can't see them at all was a much more effective solution to the problem).
The conspiracist rationale here doesn't make much sense, because the site operators also control the displayed comment count and the registration of votes.
(My confidence in this explanation comes in part from the fact that I'm pretty sure I had a hand in this coming to pass: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716).
The conspiracist rationale here doesn't make much sense, because the site operators also control the displayed comment count and the registration of votes.