this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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PSA: Lemmy votes can be manipulated (feddit.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

In my opinion, the biggest (and quite possibly most dangerous) problem is someone artificially pumping up their ideas. To all the users who sort by active / hot, this would be quite problematic.

I'd love to actually see some social media research groups actually consider how to detect and potentially eliminate this issue on Lemmy, considering Lemmy is quite new and is malleable at this point (compared to other social media). For example, if they think metric X may be a good idea to include in all metadata to increase chances of detection, then it may be possible to include this in the source code of posts / comments / activities.

I know a few professors and researchers who do research on social media and associated technologies, I'll go talk to them when they come to their office on Monday.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer 16 points 1 year ago

This also vaguely reminds me of some advanced networking topics. In mesh networks there is the possibility of rogue nodes causing havoc and different methods exist to reduce their influence or cut them out of the process.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

!remindme - oh wait…

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

@Lumidaub Ok, I will remind you on Monday Jul 10, 2023 at 9:36 AM PDT.

[–] zuhayr 0 points 1 year ago

I have been thinking about this government id aspect too. But it's not coming to me.

Users sign up with govt ID, obtain a unique social media key that's used for all activities beyond the sign up. One key per person, but a person can have multiple accounts? You know, like that database primary key.

The relationship between the govt id and social media key needs to be in a zero knowledge encryption so that no one can corelate the real person with their online presence. THIS is the bummer.