I disagree with your outright deceit allegation, because the number of people who enjoyed the article enough for a kudos is sure to be less than the number of p

I disagree with your outright deceit allegation, because the number of people who enjoyed the article enough for a kudos is sure to be less than the number of people who bothered with the widget in the upper-right corner of the screen. I wish I had a study handy but it's well-established that far fewer people who read an article continue interacting with the page after they're done. For me to believe that it's a serious problem I'd have to be convinced that at least 50% of the kudos were from people who didn't think it was worthy of kudos.