Everyone I have something very important to say about The Agora.
The Problem
Let me be super clear here to something people don’t seem to understand about lemmy and the fediverse. Votes mean absolutely nothing. No less than nothing.
In the fediverse, anyone can open a instance, create as many users as they want and one person can easily vote 10,000 times. I’m serious. This is not hard to do.
Voting at best is a guide to what is entertaining.
As soon as you allow a incentive the vast majority of votes will be fake. They might already be mostly fake.
If you try to make any decision using votes as a guide someone WILL manipulate votes to control YOU.
one solution (think of others too!)
A counsel of trusted users.
The admin, top mods may set up a group to decide on who to ban and what instances to defederate from. You will not get it right 100% of the time but you also won’t be controlled by one guy in his basement, running 4 instances and 1,000 alts.
Now i’m gonna go back to shit posting.
Then you will need to check every single votes profile. Ensure they have a valid history, with active comments and post. And then you will still likely be dealing with power users who maintain a dozen or more alts.
Bots can mimic this type of thing very easily BTW. You can write scripts to just repost top reddit post, hacker news post.
There are so many ways to game the system I just don’t understand what you actually expect to accomplish with votes.
I will check every profile. If people have dozens of alts with active, legitimate comment histories within a month of the platform forming, then I commend them for their activity.
We are following a democratic process here. We aren’t delegating the decision making to an oligarchy, even if it would simplify things.
There is no example of the system being manipulated thus far. Wait until you have evidence of that occurring before fearmongering like this.
I… posted proof of vote manipulation… perhaps, not yet detected here- but, its legitimately effortless to do (and to be extremely hard to detect)
https://lemmyonline.com/post/11492
two days before this comment was made…
When you run a script which randomly generates bot accounts on other various servers- you aren’t going to notice anything tied back to a particular profile.
In the case of the proof I linked, the bot names were very generic, and extremely easy to spot. However, its VERY easy to have the bot generate real usernames.
Its also, extremely easy to have the workflow generate actual comments, related to random posts and conversations too.
Lastly- despite my username, this actually is not a bot account. lol.
Ok, I get that bots exist on Lemmy, but I don’t think they have the capability to infiltrate a tiny community such as this just yet. Please keep an eye out and inform me immediately if you see suspicious activity. I appreciate the information regarding their capabilities.
That’s exactly what your username already says xD
Maybe stop locking threads within a couple days if you want a decent democratic process instead of just whoever jumped on the vote first
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There aren’t going to be thousands of votes though.
I repeat, if you ever see any evidence of vote manipulation, simply report it and we can discuss it at that time. Until then, kindly refrain from needlessly sowing dissension.
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What makes you think there will be thousands of votes?
I get you have a stressful day job, but there’s no need to take it out on me or anyone else on this server.
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I do have the time and I do care that much. I joined this server on June 7 when it had fewer than 100 users. I am more invested in the success of this server than anyone.
I’m not writing bullshit, I’m being totally serious. I don’t want bots to influence the voting any more than you do. One problem is that many methods of keeping bots out also have the side effect of keeping some real users out. For instance we could keep out accounts newer than 7 days, and then you’d be upset about not being able to participate.
I made the judgment that manually verifying votes would be the best temporary solution for now.
How about you just spend a bit more time here and see how it goes? If you enjoy it, feel free to stay. If you don’t, you can leave. No need for the anger.
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They ain’t sowing dissension, dude.
As for fraud voting, during the Mod Election, a few accounts were freshly created and voting for Seraph.
He’s hypothesizing about bots manipulating our votes and questioning my integrity by saying I’m not going to verify the accounts, all before we have even made a single vote that I was responsible for.
Additionally, his profile clearly demonstrates that he’s the type who likes to pick fights. He calls it “directness”. Directly to confrontation. Brilliant strategy.
Whether it’s merely a character defect or an intentional decision, this individual is most certainly sowing dissension.
We can investigate those allegations, PM me whichever accounts you found suspicious.
He can question your integrity just fine.
Sure he can. Given that I was elected moderator less than a week ago, questioning my integrity is practically the definition of sowing dissension.
It’s quite difficult for me to assess whether users are good people who are confused, trolls from the fediverse, or worse, infiltrators from reddit.
Alternatively, there are some people who are just lame.
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It doesn’t matter what they are so long as they are following the rules.
Yes you are because the people swaying the vote will be users with dozens of accounts aka the Oligarchs.
Your example of a “democratic process” is one user having 50 votes and another user having 1. If one user is 50 times more powerful than the other that isn’t democracy is it? That is apartheid.
To prove it I would literally have to do it myself.
So no one else is doing this? If it’s not a thing that’s happening, why are you here trying to undermine the voting process?
You’re the only one here threatening to abuse the voting system.
Oh yeah because people usually warn others before attempting to manipulate others
:/
Find people that are clearly using bots. It’s easy to do. It’s only hard if those user do not exist.
I can do it myself and show you it’s possible. It’s not hard. Actually I can walk you through it
I understand it can be done, what i’m saying is that it’s hard to be done without evidence. I don’t want you to shot a man to see that he can be shot, i’m just saying that it’s hard to find place where you can shot them without witnesses.
How is it hard? Just use a VPN, make 20 accounts. Post one thing from each per day for 5 days then when the next vote happens vote 20 times.
Guess you really are a conservative…
What is your goal on this server?
If your intentions are pure, there is no reason for you to do something like that. If you witness people manipulating votes, by all means, come forward. But what is the point of posing this hypothetical, and suggesting that you would manipulate the vote?
“What the point in security if I never had any accidents?”
There’s a fine line between legitimate concerns and divisive red herrings. Do you honestly believe that our votes are being manipulated by bots right now?
What’s the solution?
I’m not giving any solution, only participating in this debate about a potential (or not) problem.
Only saying that your point is, as far as my understanding, to say that “Hypothetical” problems does not need any actions.
My point is that hypothetical things may happen. We need to evaluate the chance for it to happen, against the damages it can do.
Currently, I have these 2 things in the balance:
- Interest that any organization/company/attacker may have in manipulating/disturbing our community - vs. Having a part of the community being manipulated - or (in the best case IMO) the community to be removed entirely
The choice does not seems obvious for me, I can find reasons to manipulate this instance or what appears to be on this instance. Manipulating it may have impacts on others instances of all the federations (even if at lower levels).
My current opinion is that, there is a problem that CAN happen, and so I don’t want to do nothing about it, and let it probably happen. And if it happen, cry.
You seems to think that it may never happen (contrary to me), what does make you think that ? That is the question to answer to make me change my mind ! (And I’m ready for it, I’m not here to force my opinion, I’m here to read others and improve my opinion)
On the contrary, I’m fully aware that it can and will inevitably happen. However it’s not possible right now because the server is so small that I can check every account.
There are other, more pressing issues which must be addressed, and this line of argument would lead to the Agora becoming gridlocked.
The first thing I did was acknowledge that it was a valid concern. But we need to prioritize other things, and it’s not yet necessary to revamp the voting system, just a couple of days after it was created.
Thank you you for participating in the debate and let me know if you have any other concerns.
“I don’t plan on getting hacked, so why shouldn’t my password be ‘password’”
Read and post content? What is your goal?
Ok. Go right ahead.
Do you want to decide how we make decisions here or do you want to read and post content?
I just want to build an alternative to reddit. And I want it to be enjoyable for the users.
This is in fact an example of me reading, posting , and commenting.
Very well. Good work and good day. I’m glad we agree.
We just had a bro moment
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