Lemmy

2172 readers

6 users here now

Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

(How) Does Lemmy prevent brigading and other vote manipulation? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Unidan could just create an account on multiple instances and vote for his posts/comments with all these accounts. That way his content would gain more attention than those of sincere users.

In case of malicious bots (like those annoying bootleg bots on reddit), it might even be profitable for them to create their own instance(s) just for that purpose.

Is there a mechanism to prevent that? (other than user/instance banning and the introduction question on user creation)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Malicious instances would need to be blocked by the instance you are registered to.

As for multiple accounts - couldn't the same thing be done on reddit? Just make a bunch of alts and self-inflate your own posts/comments.

These issues are as old as the internet and can only be mitigated, not prevented.

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

I'm 99% sure reddit does a lot of backflips to detect and prevent that. One casual bad actor can only burn up so many IP addresses or API keys in a short period, and I think there's some undisclosed/"secret" logic to it. It's like burglary - you can't stop it but you can cost the burglar sufficient time or money to deter them.

I haven't dug into Lemmy's code yet but I am curious what countermeasures against abuse are apart of federation. Signed, time-boxed tokens and IP addresses could be part of the protocol to mitigate abuse via federation.

load more comments (3 replies)