1851
PSA: Lemmy votes can be manipulated (feddit.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by koper@feddit.nl to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
314 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[-] Hexorg@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

I think the best solution there is so far is to require captcha for every upvote but that’d lead to poor user experience. I guess it’s the cost benefit of user experience degrading through fake upvotes vs through requiring captcha.

[-] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

If any instance ever requires a captcha for something as trivial as an upvote, I’ll simply stop upvoting on that instance.

[-] Hexorg@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Yes that’s what I meant by degrading user experience

[-] Amir@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It wouldn't stop bots because they would just use any instance without the captcha

[-] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I could see this being useful on a per community basis. Or something that a moderator could turn on and off.

For example on a political or news community during an election. It might be worth while to turn captcha on.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
1851 points (97.5% liked)

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