PSA: Lemmy votes can be manipulated

koper@feddit.nl to Fediverse@lemmy.ml – 1932 points –

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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I see what you mean, but there's also a large number of lurkers, who will only vote but never comment.

I don't think it's unfeasible to have a small number of comments on a highly upvoted post.

If it's a meme or shitpost there isn't anything to talk about

Maybe you're right, but it just felt uncanny to see thousands of upvotes on a post with only a handful of comments. Maybe someone who active on the bot-detection subreddits can pitch in.

I agree completely. 3k upvotes on the front page with 12 comments just screams vote manipulation

True, but there were also a number of subs (thinking of the various meirl spin-offs, for example) that naturally had limited engagement compared to other subs. It wasn’t uncommon to see a post with like 2K upvotes and five comments, all of them remarking how little comments there actually were.