Not my account, but want to advocate for it. Because of, personally, I find it hilarious.
So, it seems like a mod with username MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com has some interesting policies about interacting with their content.
I agree that this user called PyroRondo has no content for 5 months straight. This is unusual but totally isn’t against any rules of Lemmy.
As I suspect, they reacted to a few posts of MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com during random session of content scrolling. No brigading or any other types of harassment. I even suspect that these reactions were in communities connected to mod’s AI art, not political ones.
And this for some reason triggered a ban in all comunities. Not in 1 or 2. Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.
Edit: typo.
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Yeah unless there’s an actual attack where a bunch of throwaway accounts mass-downvote certain posts, banning a single individual for daring to downvote is wild
It’s also my first time seeing that vote-viewing website and it’s honestly a bit insane that this quirk is part of Lemmy design ngl
Federated voting means both up and downvotes have to be shared.
Yes but it doesn’t have to share usernames to anything but the originating server for the vote and host server for the content. All others only need the sum.
This does still mean instance admins can do broad bans. There’s other privacy techniques if that matters like cryptographic blind signatures for voting, etc, where you can know each user only cast one vote (and can see totals per originating server) without revealing the specific users.
In theory you could also make this ban compliant (such that you can’t vote if you’re banned, but if you’re not and cast a vote you still can’t be identified).
If you do extra fancy stuff like transparency logs with anonymous credentials and secure multiparty computation (MPC) you could do it while still allowing abuse detection. Although for now that’s very complicated and compute heavy 🤷
If the receiving instance cant view who votes, you open it up to extreme vote manipulation.
It’s trivial to start your own instance, and one could fork any code to counteract bans on their end or mass send votes without a set user behind them.
instance admins could reject votes from abusive instances and you could let mods see totals per instance
There’s other possibilities like using private set intersection and more to detect possible abusive patterns without sending raw data over between instances
Theoretically, couldn’t instances have been designed to count the sums of upvotes and downvotes by their users for any given post or comment—those counts being federated with each increase or decrease—so that a tool such as lemvotes would only be able to output a list of instances for voting activity, rather than their individual users?
Doing so would remove the ability for moderators to see individual voting patterns unless that data were also sent separately in an encrypted manner that could only be accessed by moderator accounts, however.
That would make it easier for a malicious instance to send extra votes, or otherwise manipulate vote counts.
it’s a sockpuppet account used to mass downvote. likely ran by the person who just created OPs account. literally the only thing the account has done is downvote all but a single post.
Actually yeah that might be it, https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world shows that they essentially just mass downvoted every post of Mystic Mushroom in like a span of a minute.
Nevermind then
yeah, this happens probably once a week to Mystic. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com can we get some mod action on this account, it’s def a sockpuppet.
If this account doesn’t look like a downvote troll account then wtf does?
I don’t quite see why up+downvotes wouldn’t be public. Everything you post is public, up/downvotes can be used by bots (and posts are actually heavily influenced by them on reddit), so it makes sense that you can see who down/upvoted what.
Of course it’s an additional tool for people to abuse, but if they’re the type of people who do that, then they’re going to find some way to abuse something anyway.
I bet 10 dollars, that mod hasn’t even send a message to that person asking what that was a thing.
One time I sent a dm to someone who was mass downvoting in my communities and just asked what was up. They then commented somewhere in some thread, saying that it was so inappropriate for me to send an email asking them why they were downvoting so many things. And lots of people were agreeing with them. So in my experience, sending a DM is not taken very well. So I don’t. I just ban.
But hey, if you hate every single thing in my community, then you shouldn’t be upset about being banned from it. You hate it anyway, right? :)
They hate it, spam it, then get mad they can’t look at it more.
Really telling they want to harass and spew hatred, not wanting to “support muh artists” or “stop trump only by voting for diet trump” or whatever else these Brave and Noble Knights of being shitheels.
When I DM people who are engaging in vote manipulation the best response I’ve gotten is silence and the worst responses I’ve gotten is lying, hostility, and slurs. And since so many people have decided to harass me personally over moderation, or just over AI. I won’t DM people over bans.
Why, when they’re clearly a troll? Fuck em.
Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.
That information is readily available. For example: https://lemvotes.org/
If you are that obsessed with individual votes on a comment or a post, you’re spending far too much time here
Agreed.
I see this thing for the first time. Interesting tool. But I think that this one is kinda wrong to exist? Aren’t votes and downvotes supposed to be a mostly private and detectable only for admins?
Nothing is private on the Fediverse.
Kbin used to publicly show them. It’s a design choice of the software not too.
Not really a design choice. It’s just not possible to hide due to federation
I was briefly on kbin so I do remember the bickering over every comment, which I hated. I wanted to defederate lemvotes since that also brought more bickering to lemmy, plus I’m not a fan of the idea. As an admin, I can easily see who downvoted me, even find who consistently downvotes me, but it doesn’t really personally help me. There was so much drama with lemvotes and calling out people all the time, I think it is supposed to discourage downvoting by making people aware they are under survelliance. I poked through Mbin and could only see upvotes (boosts), not downvotes (reduces). I do wish for a way to disable downvotes on the individual community level in lemmy, the way Piefed does, then our community wouldn’t need lemvotes anymore (hopefully). The votes can be retrieved through the API, but the average user just browses without it.
Thanks for the info. Totally different from Reddit where only admins could see this info.
On reddit, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever Reddit decides it to be.
In the Fediverse, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever the user decides it to be. You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here. You are free to use the admin-only information you glean from that instance under the user account you are using here.
You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here.
You vastly overestimate my technical capabilities!
Brother, if I can do it, anyone can. I promise!
Community moderators can also see who has upvoted or downvoted on their own communities.
Hmm… Okay, thanks for the info.
If you want your votes to be (somewhat) private, probably the best thing to do is to create an alternative account and use that for voting without making any comments/posts.
PieFed also gives you an option so that your votes are only shared within the same instance. So, tools like “lemvotes” wouldn’t be able to pick up on your voting history. In that case only the local instance Admins (and maybe moderators) would be able to see your voting history.
From this user it is fairly obvious that it was created recently. They downvoted 49 times in the first few minutes of activity. They then upvoted once a few days later.
https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world
Based on the first day of activity, it almost does look like this was an account created just for downvoting.
it’s there so that people like
youthis random account that is totally not you cannot get away with running bots to mass downvote thingsyouthis random account that is totally not you don’t like.
an account only used to downvote, being championed by a new account with no history. did your sockpuppet getting banned bother you that much?
Gotta love how Hexbear is okay with harassing our community when they support the cause.
So in general, I agree that moderators who ban people for downvoting are absolutely PTB, and are basically engaging in vote manipulation themselves through their actions.
In this case however, we’re looking at an account that has upvoted 1 post and downvoted 49 (With no comment interaction whatsoever) in the span of 3 minutes. This is a pretty clear downvoting account.
This is with you being banned from the same communities 3 days ago, which I understand is great motivation to look at the moderation practices, but the fact that you’re posting about another users bans, rather than your own is suspicious with regards to the accusations in this thread of it being your sockpuppet.
If you want to discuss your bans by this mod, I would be interested in the conversation. But this user deserves the ban.
Looks like this account and their main got what they deserved. I don’t know why anyone would lie about something so easy to prove or disprove. Mods can see votes, so can admins. They’re also easily viewable on Lemvotes.org.
This isn’t organic voting, anyone can see that.
this looks similar to maddddddddddddddddd@sh.itjust.works, and oji@lemmy.world is the more organic kind you can see when finding someone oji hates you see theres mass downvote within short interval time
But Hexbear said you deserved because it is harmless content in a self contained space, on an instance that’s comfortable with it.
Muh left unity thoooo
I’m sorry you’re stuck dealing with such disgusting people constantly.
They can’t even see my posts or communities anymore. What are they complaining about? Hexbears really are the worst people. I don’t understand why they’re still federated with us when they hate us so much.
Fuck if I know, genuinely think it’s so they can just invade communities and go “well it was on our front page, it’s not an attack when we do it.”
I don’t exactly love those comments, but I gotta say it’s uhh 2 maybe 3 hexbears that made comments and your reaction is that everyone there sucks? Idk, maybe I’m missing something here
It’s a recurring issue with them and us. This isn’t the first time they’ve started a fight and justified it.
Okay, thanks for your explanation
Account made to downvote/stalk a community, they deserved it.
And fuck the Hexbear users defending the banned account because they hate the content. Fucking jackasses.
Yep. This happened to my communities, and STILL happens when I create a community. When I create a new one, I have to immediately pre-ban like 12 usernames that just downvote my posts, regardless of content immediately after I post.
Sure, I guess they are allowed to do that. But I’m also allowed to ban them for it. :)
if you want to make your comms on AN, we can set it up so that nobody can downvote posts except AN members or users of trusted instances (all our trusted instances require application to register). this virtually eliminates downvote harassment.
I actually like that idea and will keep in mind. Thank you!
Yeah it’s disappointing. See my comment below. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67799335/25742930
I don’t produce content and I think this is my first comment. I usually just read content and sometimes vote. Nobody banned me yet for not contributing with content 😬
You have commented before and even if you didn’t, your voting history is extremely regular next to people like the one in the post or someone like maddddddddddddddddd@sh.itjust.works notice the downvote to upvote ratio and timestamp of each voting
Removed by mod
