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.

  • PetrichorBias@lemmy.one
    6·
    1 year ago

    This was a problem on reddit too. Anyone could create accounts - heck, I had 8 accounts:

    one main, one alt, one “professional” (linked publicly on my website), and five for my bots (whose accounts were optimistically created, but were never properly run). I had all 8 accounts signed in on my third-party app and I could easily manipulate votes on the posts I posted.

    I feel like this is what happened when you’d see posts with hundreds / thousands of upvotes but had only 20-ish comments.

    There needs to be a better way to solve this, but I’m unsure if we truly can solve this. Botnets are a problem across all social media (my undergrad thesis many years ago was detecting botnets on Reddit using Graph Neural Networks).

    Fwiw, I have only one Lemmy account.

    • AndrewZabar@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      On Reddit there were literally bot armies by which thousands of votes could be instantly implemented. It will become a problem if votes have any actual effect.

      It’s fine if they’re only there as an indicator, but if the votes are what determine popularity, prioritize visibility, it will become a total shitshow at some point. And it will be rapid. So yeah, better to have a defense system in place asap.

  • krnl386@lemmy.ca
    1·
    1 year ago

    Did anyone ever claim that the Fediverse is somehow a solution for the bot/fake vote or even brigading problem?

  • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    You mean to tell me that copying the exact same system that Reddit was using and couldn’t keep bots out of is still vuln to bots? Wild

    Until we find a smarter way or at least a different way to rank/filter content, we’re going to be stuck in this same boat.

    Who’s to say I don’t create a community of real people who are devoted to manipulating votes? What’s the difference?

    The issue at hand is the post ranking system/karma itself. But we’re prolly gonna be focusing on infosec going forward given what just happened

  • menturi@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if an instance could only allow votes by users who are part of instances that require email verification or some other verification method. I would imagine that would heavily help reduce vote manipulation on that particular instance.

  • milicent_bystandr@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if it’s possible …and not overly undesirable… to have your instance essentially put an import tax on other instances’ votes. On the one hand, it’s a dangerous direction for a free and equal internet; but on the other, it’s a way of allowing access to dubious communities/instances, without giving them the power to overwhelm your users’ feeds. Essentially, the user gets the content of the fediverse, primarily curated by the community of their own instance.