this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Vote fuzzing. Are we seriously doing this here now too?? (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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You know we all escaped Reddit for greener pastures. But I have increasingly noticed that greener pastures are not to be found in the Fediverse either.

I undeniably witnessed some vote fuzzing this morning and I feel a bit psychologically violated whenever I notice people or companies or platforms engaging in psychological manipulation.

It does make me feel livid.

Update - case closed because:

Wisdom from [email protected]

There is no vote fuzzing in Lemmy. The software doesn’t support it. Period.

I’ve been paying attention to the Lemmy mod tools and Lemmy admin Matrix rooms, and it’s been the subject of major discussion over the past week between one or two users who keep bringing it up and, like, everyone else (including the Lemmy devs) who are all like, “no, not now, not ever.”

It’s not a thing.

SO, what could explain what you’re seeing?

Possible explanations include:

Vote brigading

Alt account abuse

A genuine statistical fluke where there are genuine votes that are producing this bizarre pattern, and hopefully it will subside soon along with your reasonably justified paranoia.

The solution to all of these possibilities, and possibly others that I did not enumerate here, is to just ignore the problem and move on with your life. Remember: nothing that happens here is really important.

I really hope this makes you feel better. Because it should.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I change accidental votes all the time because I use a mobile app that’s heavily dependent on gestures, and swiping back often gets confused with a vote swipe. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this.

Christian Selig spent years fine-tuning the swipe behavior in Apollo, and I guess it’ll take time before the swipe behavior in Lemmy apps reach the same level of polish. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Okay that makes sense, but my point is that nobody should've been there in that old abandoned post to begin with, impossible to accidentally upvote when no one is even there, much less FOUR UPVOTES all at the same time, 115 comments deep, in an old forgotten dusty post.

Because that's what happened. My obscure lonely hidden comment instantly went from 1 point to 5 points then back to 1 again.

It was weird and that's what made me assume vote fuzzing was going on.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Well, here’s the thing: there is no vote fuzzing in Lemmy. The software doesn’t support it. Period.

I’ve been paying attention to the Lemmy mod tools and Lemmy admin Matrix rooms, and it’s been the subject of major discussion over the past week between one or two users who keep bringing it up and, like, everyone else (including the Lemmy devs) who are all like, “no, not now, not ever.”

It’s not a thing.

SO, what could explain what you’re seeing?

Possible explanations include:

  1. Vote brigading - old-school reddit tactic to get a bunch of users to dogpile a comment with up votes or down votes to achieve the desired effect.

  2. Alt account abuse - you got a fan who hates you, and they registered several alto accounts on an instance or across several instances, and they use several logins to register multiple up and or down votes. Congratulations, you got a fan, and they hate you. There’s not much you can do, unless you can find proof and submit it to each and every instance admin and hope they care enough to take action, or you can just ignore it and feel pity for the person who has an obsession for you. I recommend the latter.

  3. A genuine statistical fluke where there are genuine votes that are producing this bizarre pattern, and hopefully it will subside soon along with your reasonably justified paranoia.

The good news is that the solution to all of these possibilities, and possibly other possibilities that I did not enumerate here, is to just ignore the problem and move on with your life. Remember: nothing that happens here is really important to you individually, nor to any of this collectively with regards to what people really say or do here, so you can move on and live your life, secure knowledge that the things people do and say here and the votes that occur here as well as the comments will have absolutely no impact on your real life.

I really hope this makes you feel better. Because it should.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Excellent breakdown. Thank you!

ignore the problem and move on with your life. Remember: nothing that happens here is really important to you individually

Yup! I was already over this hours ago, but people keep responding to this so I keep responding to their responses 😂

I will officially close the case now because I'm over it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Glad to hear it. Some people never learn this lesson, and it makes them miserable. Some of them run Reddit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have a good evening!