I am curious what can be done about the Lemmy.World era of botting corpo comments to protect their investments?
Anything remotely federated w/ LW has a massive hard-on for corporations (anti-piracy boot-lickers only added us back when we had the largest community in the fediverse), racism (you ain’t american, you aint right), a desire to troll/argue in bad faith, and a general “fuck you, I have 500 accounts to down-vote with.”
I myself have over 60 accounts on Lemmy.World; and because of that, I am 100% certain somebody has a type of SMM portal to scan for keywords and upvote/downvote accordingly.
Don’t believe me?
Go post about Apple, Facebook, Tesla, or any other 1% owned entity, and watch which accounts upvote/downvote in less time than required to read the post.
Y’all put the pitchforks down a bit. The lw peeps have been nothing but helpful. They did a mistake with piracy but they reverted it eventually.
Fighting spam and astroturfing is something that affects lemmy as a whole ecosystem. Yes it’s more possible with instances which have open registrations but as a counterpoint closed registration also drive people away.
We’re all in this together and should try to find ways to collaborate our defenses instead of attacking other admins
Thank you for calling to calm
I don’t share their view on Threads. In that way we’re not all in this together.
Fighting spam and astroturfing is something that affects lemmy as a whole ecosystem. Yes it’s more possible with instances which have open registrations but as a counterpoint closed registration also drive people away.
I’m in agreement towards this. The only reason Lemmy.world is so uncomfortably large is that everyone here decided to close registrations when Reddit was having the migration. sh.itjust.works was literally born because of the fact everyone else was either closing off registration entirely or requiring applications.
Call it spam defense or whatever you want but asking people to essentially beg for an account, which is what you’re doing, don’t whitewash it, increases the barrier to entry and makes it so people don’t even want to try joining out of fear of rejection, or worse they try, don’t know they were rejected, and think Lemmy is a buggy piece of shit and leave. Maybe it makes automated spam a tiny bit harder and moderation that much lazier and laid back but those who are really commited, the astroturfers, are still going to register and write up applications filled with sweet lies to get you to hit approve, and you will hit approve because they’ll seem like normal users.
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com uh, don’t take any of this personally, this isn’t made to target anyone specifically, I’m just trying to point out how the behavior of other instances in the Fediverse has contributed towards world becoming so uncomfortably large (and ultimately difficult to moderate because of it).
I don’t think that’s quite the reason. lemmy.dbzer0.com was never closed for registrations, but added an application very soon which protected us from a lot of struggles. I Think LW got popular because it’s a very centrist instance, so people who don’t know what else, naturally flock to it. It was also one of the very first one, so it got a lot of early mover advantage, while lemmy.ml fell flat on its face becuase the admins didn’t think to upgrade their infra to something that could handle it until the migration was over.
I feel like many other instances did also shut their doors, wasn’t just lemmy.ml, I never tried signing up to dbzer0 back then (didn’t come here until after world’s big feud over c/piracy) so I don’t know entirely what the situation here was like at the time here, I just know that enough instances took the route of either completely closing or very strict application procedures to make it difficult for Redditors migrating here.
I don’t deny though that another big part of it definitely was lemmy.world’s more centrist mentality and more lenient moderation.
We’re all in this together and should try to find ways to collaborate our defenses instead of attacking other admins
The only way this works (if I am to take their moderation at face value) would be for us to make more bot accounts than them.
With that said, it’s already a terrible system that benefits the 1% (who is very capable of paying devs/server farms/bot nets/etc to boost their investments).
Allowing the bots is allowing the 1% to choose the exact narrative that we see on Lemmy.
I’m pretty sure lw admins don’t want sock puppets and bot accounts either. They have access to ip info and other details and other users are also vigilant against it. But against dedicated actors there’s no perfect protection, no matter the countermeasures. If there’s instances which are enabling this behaviour more overtly, they tend to get defederated
The moderation over the aforementioned accounts seems… one sided to say the least
I (read: IMHO) would argue that they do want sock puppet/bot accounts because it boosts the perceived traffic by laymen, yeah?
Don’t assume malice so easily. Running around fediverse server is a lot of work and it’s also unpaid work.
To add on to my point above, the only reason that they re-federated w/ us is because of the traffic they were losing to the the “tiny” community here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
A bot for a bot makes the Lemmyverse a bot-infested shithole.
Do the points matter that much to you?
If you have a post they don’t want seen, the downvotes inherently work to remove it from all the instances that use downvotes.
You don’t have to want up votes to see why a lemmy bot net is a bad thing.
I think a better solution would be to simply ban malicious bot accounts and vote manipulators from the instance, and encourage other instances to do the same. Maybe we could set up something on Fediseer which indexes accounts flagged as bots or abusers to make this easier. If these accounts were banned from many major instances their vote manipulation would only affect Lemmy.world and ones that didn’t ban the accounts. Would be better to ban them and purge their votes from the DB than it would to counter them with sock-puppets.
Lemmy.world is the worst. It should be defederated by everyone.
Especially because their admins are very bad people.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/5160618
Found that to be a great example.
Lemmy.World TOS Section Labeled “Our Rights”
6.0: You are solely and entirely responsible for your use of the website and your computer, internet, and data security.
6.1: You waive Lemmy.World and its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, and all their respective staff, representatives, service providers, contractors, licensors, licensees, and successors from any claims resulting from any action taken by Lemmy.World, and any of the foregoing parties relating to any investigations by either us or by law enforcement authorities.
6.2: In the case of a violation of the Terms of Service, here is what may happen:
6.2.0: Removal of the violating content, and asking you to not repeat it again. 6.2.1: Being warned for the second time, and having your account temporarily suspended. 6.2.2: Adding temporary or permanent limitations to Lemmy.World communities, such as applying NSFW tags or restricting the posting of new content by users. 6.2.3: Removal of all content associated with the violating party. 6.2.4: Banishing of communities. 6.2.5: Permanent banishing of user accounts.That TOS isn’t even legal in USA.
Even less so in EU.
Wow. That is some real incompentency.
I’m kinda tempted to make a gpdr request and fuck them up when they fuck it up.
Not gonna do that because gpdr is an absolute fucked piece of law, and I dont want to open that can of worms, but I’m still tempted.
I think open-invite servers like that are asking for trouble. Maybe not a de-federation, but a safer space from the bot swarm I’m seeing.
Moderation federation is very spotty and always has been. I’ve cumulatively spent a few hours checking and it’s consistently inconsistent. Not to mention the fact that the referenced post was made after a user tried to make .world their personal drama blog using several accounts. This and the other post strike me as faux indignation.
Yeah antik is a admin there however…
And its not about them removing not enough… Not at all.
First link doesn’t lead anywhere?
Open in new tab or external, it definitely works.
It does now, don’t know what happened yesterday
No worries. Maybe it was the instance
ha, yeah, ive experienced this. i mean, its standard bot behavior to look for new posts and act accordingly.
the votes should be public… are they not on lemmy? im usin mbin, where they are exposed… except downvotes are not federated here
If you have your own instance, you do get that info via federation w/ other servers. Normal users cannot see what I am suggesting, no.
It’s been a big issues with the lemmy devs iirc (because publicity opens up the avenue for doxxing). But this also reveals that the same 50-100 accounts vote w/ their owner.
you dont understand. the kbin/mbin software does not accept downvotes for federation. its just dropped traffic.
I would almost like to see something similar to that then.
It’s a server setting on Lemmy. My instance doesn’t federate downvotes either, no anonymous mass-downvoting over here.
It’s so funny how the whole “Decentralization means Lemmy is better than Reddit, and no bad actors can take over” mantra keeps being tossed around. But here we are with malicious actors and no (real) solutions only more issues.
And a lot of hand waving too. As if fixing this problem wouldn’t be incredibly easy.
I always thought that powers that be wouldn’t let us get away from the status quo that easy in the fediverse and there must be an instance that’s indirectly funded by them but they inherently control the narrative. It might be that or the reddit exodus landed all the crazies in one instance because other instances were overwhelmed but LW was not 🤔. so who knows…
You named the three most hated brands on Lemmy. So are you saying they upvote or downvote these posts? They’re mostly downvoted with disgusting comments and insults to go with them. Along with someone calling another a tankie or some shit in a post where it has no relevance.
I definitely noticed people getting extremely defensive about my negative comments towards Apple and Spotify, Spotify far, far more.
Webhook the word “Spotify” and watch the same 20 accounts agree on the sentiment of their owner
Maybe we could have some kind of Astroturfer and/or spammer tracking feature in Fediseer to help curb the influence of accounts like this, if an instance bans these people for astroturfing the users can be flagged on Fediseer for this purpose so other instances can do the same. They probably won’t be banned by Lemmy.world but if they’re banned by other instances their effect becomes limited to Lemmy.world.
Just watching this from a downvote-disabled instance that requires registration approval.
This problem also just continues to grow.
The longer an established instance has the appearance of a large userbase, the worse it’s going to be to claw back that access now that millions of (real) accounts will decide on their echo chamber over yours…
Just to be clear, this isn’t an echo chamber, users are free to use words to express opposition. Lazy downvotes are ignored. Bots are a non-issue.
LW admins are mothers suckers.
I dont block this instance bc of the number of c on it, for now,
I hope that will move on others instance, then i should freely block them.I dont block this instance bc of the number of c on it, for now,
Might as well unblock Threads for the same reason
Thread is not seen as “Lemmy” instead of LW for now.
I do hope you are aware that blocking Instances doesn’t do anything besides blocking the communities on them.
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
I apologize if you already knew this, I know that many people don’t and are under the impression that it behaves like Defederation. It blocking the communities is the sole and only purpose. They thought blocking users from an instance would be disruptive, and rightfully so.
Yeah i know,
If i block lw now, i just boycott me self for nothing.
I just dont want to participate a lot on it if I can.The day I block them, I will no “miss” content, and even will not miss LW users outside of it. Win win.
I would like big instances block them and create a movement but that’s my POV.
I’ve experienced it already bc I prefer test rather than rtfm ^^" I’m still blocking users. That’s two things. Blocking c from my eyes and ignoring users regrding them individually.
Unfortuantelly I’m aware that LW represent lenmy for a lot, for now, so that’s still a good feature, regarding me.
But if a lot do that, others instances will see theirs c growing and maybe become the reference over the one on LW. Because of lack of activity on them.
I would like big instances block them and create a movement but that’s my POV.
That would be a good idea but honestly until the narrative around de-federation changes that probably isn’t going to happen. There’s this really weird idea of “user choice” or “freedom of speech” being important on the fediverse. It’s weird because, just at an instance level, not even counting federation that isn’t a thing, mods can ban you from the communities, admins can ban you from the instance itself, preventing you from even logging in (might be a Data privacy issue to go that far since laws exist allowing people to request and erase information but I digress) so if people don’t even have user freedom or freedom of speech on their own instance without federation, why would or should that same concept not extend to federation? I mean ActivityPub was literally built for that purpose in mind, defederation and banning are features of it. It’s not like Nostr where the network itself is resistant to censorship from individual nodes. The network allows and even intends for censorship to be used, and honestly one look at Nostr reveals why, when you don’t apply a decent level of moderation, the trolls and assholes will rule and dominate.
Defederation needs to stop being viewed as “taking away user choice” and simply seen as something that is up to the admins, just like they can ban users at will, they can defederate at will, no further questions asked.
The instant voting issue can likely be handled by making honeypot posts and acting on the accounts that consistently action in <20 seconds or so.
That said, the one thing I wish Lemmy could do is properly identify alts. There’s no system in place to combat some asshole with 1k voting power (or reporting power for the few communities with an automod like system set up) destroying the balance on a whim.
