Based take

Yes

Well, if you’re optimizing for total # of upvotes, and your only input is the time of day you post, it actually makes good sense to use total upvotes as the metric.

Actually, it did this based on the number of upvotes of the highest posts of the day of each week, and what time of day they were actually posted at. No database access required, I’d presume

Fun fact, NASA budgets tends to go up under republican presidencies, and go down under democratic presidencies.