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.

  • @[email protected]M
    6•1 year ago

    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?

    • JakyllaEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      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)

      • @[email protected]MEnglish
        0•1 year ago

        You seems to think that it may never happen (contrary to me), what does you make think that ?

        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.