this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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PSA: Lemmy votes can be manipulated (feddit.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The best part of the fediverse is that anyone can run their own server. The downside of this is that anyone can easily create hordes of fake accounts, as I will now demonstrate.

Fighting fake accounts is hard and most implementations do not currently have an effective way of filtering out fake accounts. I'm sure that the developers will step in if this becomes a bigger problem. Until then, remember that votes are just a number.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was referring to bots: whether they downvote one post/comment to -1000, or upvote the rest to +1000, the effect is the same... for anyone sorting by votes.

In regards to people, I agree that downvotes are not really constructive, that's why beehav.org doesn't allow them.

But in general, I'm afraid Lemmy will have to end up offering similar vote related features as Reddit: hide vote counts for some period of time, "randomize" them a bit to drive bots crazy, and that kind of stuff.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For bots the simple effect on the algorithm is similar either way, i agree. When we can see the downvotes though is my problem. If bots downvote you -1000 then it gives admins more info to control bot brigading, but helps users act like chimps and just mash the downvote button. Imagine having a bot group that just downvotes someone you don't like by a reasonable number of votes for the context. You'd be so doomed. If that same bot group only gave upvotes to the bot-user then it'd be totally different in the thread.