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] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did anyone ever claim that the Fediverse is somehow a solution for the bot/fake vote or even brigading problem?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the point is that the Fediverse is severely limited by this vulnerability. It's not supposed to solve that specific problem, but that problem might need to be addressed if we want the Fediverse to be able to do what we want it to do (put the power back in the hands of the users)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see your point... votes from a compromised instance (or instances) and such. How is this more or less vulnerable to a centralized model?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I'm not a security expert by any means, though I would imagine this type of attack can more be more easily made harder to execute if all accounts have to go through one server first. Lemmy seems to be as strong as the weakest link in this regard, but a centralized model is just a single link. I imagine that any effective strategy that works for Lemmy is much easier on a centralized platforms, even though the reverse statement isn't true.

That said, I'm optimistic that this gets figured out. Centralized platforms have had decades to solve this problem and we're just getting started.