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 koper@feddit.nl to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] lemming007@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is the definition of a "fake account"?

[–] NightAuthor@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Are you an academic or just dense?

[–] SafetyGoggles@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@NightAuthor@beehaw.org

Are you an academic or just dense?

I thought beehaw is all about inclusivity and safe space and friendly shit

[–] NightAuthor@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Who says I’m not being inclusive. If I want to provide a helpful answer to the question, I must know what perspective they’re asking from.

[–] navigatron@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Let’s go academic with it, and skip straight past “impossible to answer” directly to heuristic / attribute analysis.

What are the attributes / behaviors / tells of a fake account?

[–] hawkwind@lemmy.management 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In this context it would be an account with the sole purpose of boosting the visible popularity of a post or comment.

[–] lemming007@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But that's kinda the point of all posts. You post because you want people to see something and you want your post to be popular so it can be seen by the largest amount of people.

[–] hawkwind@lemmy.management 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your right. You just asked what a "fake account" was though. I think it's generally accepted that if you create "alt" accounts for the sole purpose of vote manipulation, you're being a dick.

[–] lemming007@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why am I being a dick, I was genuinely curious. What do you mean "vote manipulation"? Like making a post with one account and creating another one to upvote the post?

[–] hawkwind@lemmy.management 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't mean YOU are being a dick. If SOMEONE creates “alt” accounts for the sole purpose of vote manipulation, they're being a dick. I was using the royal "you," a weird english language thing. You, yourself, are not a dick. We'll you might be, but I don't think so.

[–] lemming007@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Sorry, I misunderstood. I definitely agree accounts created for the sole purpose of upvoting stuff/bot farms are bad. I just don't know if there's an effective way to fight it as they're getting pretty elaborate these days and it's hard to distinguish them from real accounts.

Pretty soon we'll be at the point where no one will trust anything on the Internet.