Not my account, but want to advocate for it. Because of, personally, I find it hilarious.
So, it seems like a mod with username MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com has some interesting policies about interacting with their content.
I agree that this user called PyroRondo has no content for 5 months straight. This is unusual but totally isn’t against any rules of Lemmy.
As I suspect, they reacted to a few posts of MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com during random session of content scrolling. No brigading or any other types of harassment. I even suspect that these reactions were in communities connected to mod’s AI art, not political ones.
And this for some reason triggered a ban in all comunities. Not in 1 or 2. Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.
Edit: typo.
I don’t produce content and I think this is my first comment. I usually just read content and sometimes vote. Nobody banned me yet for not contributing with content 😬
You have commented before and even if you didn’t, your voting history is extremely regular next to people like the one in the post or someone like maddddddddddddddddd@sh.itjust.works notice the downvote to upvote ratio and timestamp of each voting
Looks like this account and their main got what they deserved. I don’t know why anyone would lie about something so easy to prove or disprove. Mods can see votes, so can admins. They’re also easily viewable on Lemvotes.org.
This isn’t organic voting, anyone can see that.
this looks similar to maddddddddddddddddd@sh.itjust.works, and oji@lemmy.world is the more organic kind you can see when finding someone oji hates you see theres mass downvote within short interval time
But Hexbear said you deserved because it is harmless content in a self contained space, on an instance that’s comfortable with it.
Muh left unity thoooo
I’m sorry you’re stuck dealing with such disgusting people constantly.
They can’t even see my posts or communities anymore. What are they complaining about? Hexbears really are the worst people. I don’t understand why they’re still federated with us when they hate us so much.
Fuck if I know, genuinely think it’s so they can just invade communities and go “well it was on our front page, it’s not an attack when we do it.”
I don’t exactly love those comments, but I gotta say it’s uhh 2 maybe 3 hexbears that made comments and your reaction is that everyone there sucks? Idk, maybe I’m missing something here
It’s a recurring issue with them and us. This isn’t the first time they’ve started a fight and justified it.
Okay, thanks for your explanation
So in general, I agree that moderators who ban people for downvoting are absolutely PTB, and are basically engaging in vote manipulation themselves through their actions.
In this case however, we’re looking at an account that has upvoted 1 post and downvoted 49 (With no comment interaction whatsoever) in the span of 3 minutes. This is a pretty clear downvoting account.
This is with you being banned from the same communities 3 days ago, which I understand is great motivation to look at the moderation practices, but the fact that you’re posting about another users bans, rather than your own is suspicious with regards to the accusations in this thread of it being your sockpuppet.
If you want to discuss your bans by this mod, I would be interested in the conversation. But this user deserves the ban.
Account made to downvote/stalk a community, they deserved it.
And fuck the Hexbear users defending the banned account because they hate the content. Fucking jackasses.
Yep. This happened to my communities, and STILL happens when I create a community. When I create a new one, I have to immediately pre-ban like 12 usernames that just downvote my posts, regardless of content immediately after I post.
Sure, I guess they are allowed to do that. But I’m also allowed to ban them for it. :)
if you want to make your comms on AN, we can set it up so that nobody can downvote posts except AN members or users of trusted instances (all our trusted instances require application to register). this virtually eliminates downvote harassment.
Yeah it’s disappointing. See my comment below. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67799335/25742930
Yeah unless there’s an actual attack where a bunch of throwaway accounts mass-downvote certain posts, banning a single individual for daring to downvote is wild
It’s also my first time seeing that vote-viewing website and it’s honestly a bit insane that this quirk is part of Lemmy design ngl
Federated voting means both up and downvotes have to be shared.
Yes but it doesn’t have to share usernames to anything but the originating server for the vote and host server for the content. All others only need the sum.
This does still mean instance admins can do broad bans. There’s other privacy techniques if that matters like cryptographic blind signatures for voting, etc, where you can know each user only cast one vote (and can see totals per originating server) without revealing the specific users.
In theory you could also make this ban compliant (such that you can’t vote if you’re banned, but if you’re not and cast a vote you still can’t be identified).
If you do extra fancy stuff like transparency logs with anonymous credentials and secure multiparty computation (MPC) you could do it while still allowing abuse detection. Although for now that’s very complicated and compute heavy 🤷
If the receiving instance cant view who votes, you open it up to extreme vote manipulation.
It’s trivial to start your own instance, and one could fork any code to counteract bans on their end or mass send votes without a set user behind them.
instance admins could reject votes from abusive instances and you could let mods see totals per instance
There’s other possibilities like using private set intersection and more to detect possible abusive patterns without sending raw data over between instances
If you actually understand how to implement all that maybe you should go contribute to PieFed.
Piefed already tried exactly that and had to revert because it’s indistinguishable from vote manipulation
People just need to accept that on platforms where votes determine ranking, or worse, user reputation scores. Vote manipulation will be a real problem, and it needs to be managed or people are allowed to suppress and destroy smaller communities with alts if they so choose.
Theoretically, couldn’t instances have been designed to count the sums of upvotes and downvotes by their users for any given post or comment—those counts being federated with each increase or decrease—so that a tool such as lemvotes would only be able to output a list of instances for voting activity, rather than their individual users?
Doing so would remove the ability for moderators to see individual voting patterns unless that data were also sent separately in an encrypted manner that could only be accessed by moderator accounts, however.
That would make it easier for a malicious instance to send extra votes, or otherwise manipulate vote counts.
it’s a sockpuppet account used to mass downvote. likely ran by the person who just created OPs account. literally the only thing the account has done is downvote all but a single post.
Actually yeah that might be it, https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world shows that they essentially just mass downvoted every post of Mystic Mushroom in like a span of a minute.
Nevermind then
yeah, this happens probably once a week to Mystic. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com can we get some mod action on this account, it’s def a sockpuppet.
If this account doesn’t look like a downvote troll account then wtf does?
I don’t quite see why up+downvotes wouldn’t be public. Everything you post is public, up/downvotes can be used by bots (and posts are actually heavily influenced by them on reddit), so it makes sense that you can see who down/upvoted what.
Of course it’s an additional tool for people to abuse, but if they’re the type of people who do that, then they’re going to find some way to abuse something anyway.
It’s also my first time seeing that vote-viewing website and it’s honestly a bit insane that this quirk is part of Lemmy design ngl
It’s kind of in the nature of the fediverse.
For the most part though it just proves that you don’t know why people upvote or downvote something until they post. Otherwise it just reveals chronic haters.
Like, I got a couple haters that downvote my post history periodically. I know it’s just primarily just a proud german nationalist and an australian racist that can’t stand to see my username.
But I do see that people use vote lookups to provoke fights and, well, pursue people for their votes, which is kind of silly.
an australian racist
ikt?
I bet 10 dollars, that mod hasn’t even send a message to that person asking what that was a thing.
One time I sent a dm to someone who was mass downvoting in my communities and just asked what was up. They then commented somewhere in some thread, saying that it was so inappropriate for me to send an email asking them why they were downvoting so many things. And lots of people were agreeing with them. So in my experience, sending a DM is not taken very well. So I don’t. I just ban.
But hey, if you hate every single thing in my community, then you shouldn’t be upset about being banned from it. You hate it anyway, right? :)
They hate it, spam it, then get mad they can’t look at it more.
Really telling they want to harass and spew hatred, not wanting to “support muh artists” or “stop trump only by voting for diet trump” or whatever else these Brave and Noble Knights of being shitheels.
When I DM people who are engaging in vote manipulation the best response I’ve gotten is silence and the worst responses I’ve gotten is lying, hostility, and slurs. And since so many people have decided to harass me personally over moderation, or just over AI. I won’t DM people over bans.
Why, when they’re clearly a troll? Fuck em.
an account only used to downvote, being championed by a new account with no history. did your sockpuppet getting banned bother you that much?
Gotta love how Hexbear is okay with harassing our community when they support the cause.
Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.
That information is readily available. For example: https://lemvotes.org/
If you are that obsessed with individual votes on a comment or a post, you’re spending far too much time here
Agreed.
It’s open for admins to see. So lemmyvotes either hosts their own instance or has admin access to one, and then just relays that.
Exactly. Anyone in the fediverse can arbitrarily become an admin, simply by deciding to host an instance.
I see this thing for the first time. Interesting tool. But I think that this one is kinda wrong to exist? Aren’t votes and downvotes supposed to be a mostly private and detectable only for admins?
Nothing is private on the Fediverse.
Kbin used to publicly show them. It’s a design choice of the software not too.
Not really a design choice. It’s just not possible to hide due to federation
I was briefly on kbin so I do remember the bickering over every comment, which I hated. I wanted to defederate lemvotes since that also brought more bickering to lemmy, plus I’m not a fan of the idea. As an admin, I can easily see who downvoted me, even find who consistently downvotes me, but it doesn’t really personally help me. There was so much drama with lemvotes and calling out people all the time, I think it is supposed to discourage downvoting by making people aware they are under survelliance. I poked through Mbin and could only see upvotes (boosts), not downvotes (reduces). I do wish for a way to disable downvotes on the individual community level in lemmy, the way Piefed does, then our community wouldn’t need lemvotes anymore (hopefully). The votes can be retrieved through the API, but the average user just browses without it.
Thanks for the info. Totally different from Reddit where only admins could see this info.
On reddit, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever Reddit decides it to be.
In the Fediverse, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever the user decides it to be. You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here. You are free to use the admin-only information you glean from that instance under the user account you are using here.
You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here.
You vastly overestimate my technical capabilities!
Brother, if I can do it, anyone can. I promise!
Mods can see votes on content in their communities without needing external tools too. The information is public, it’s just not usually made visible to everyone.
If you want your votes to be (somewhat) private, probably the best thing to do is to create an alternative account and use that for voting without making any comments/posts.
PieFed also gives you an option so that your votes are only shared within the same instance. So, tools like “lemvotes” wouldn’t be able to pick up on your voting history. In that case only the local instance Admins (and maybe moderators) would be able to see your voting history.
From this user it is fairly obvious that it was created recently. They downvoted 49 times in the first few minutes of activity. They then upvoted once a few days later.
https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world
Based on the first day of activity, it almost does look like this was an account created just for downvoting.
It’s funny how you say that’s the best strategy in a thread about somebody getting banned for it.
49 downs in a minute or two and 1 upvote is a little different than the use that was suggested, I would say.
Community moderators can also see who has upvoted or downvoted on their own communities.
Hmm… Okay, thanks for the info.
Lemmy certainly isn’t a very privacy-respecting platform.
It never pretended to be. It’s a platform for broadcasting actions based on usernames not secure communications. Kinda cross purposes to think you can effectively do both. Why I liked that kbin was very upfront and let users see all engagement right from the post. It can provide a level of anonymity if you want (though community moderation resists this because strong anonymous protections just leads to abuse), but privacy for that persona isn’t part of the plank.
Eh, that’s not really true. The concept of “privacy” has been broadly corrupted by centralized services. There is no “privacy” when you provide information to another person, let alone publish it to the world. Never has been. You never had any actual “privacy” on any platform. What you had was admins lightly concealing from you the manner in which they used the information you provided. That’s not “privacy”.
Actual privacy only comes when you shut your mouth and keep a thought to yourself. As soon as you put the idea out, you abandoned your expectation of privacy.
The purpose of Lemmy is communication. It is designed to share the information you provide to the general public, whether that information is a post, a comment, an upvote or downvote. It is designed to limit and bypass attempts at centralized control over the flow of that information.
How? I’m a mod and haven’t figured that out yet (short of looking up things one at a time on lemvotes).
Click the “…” in any post on your community and it will have a “View Votes” option
Ah, thanks!
it’s there so that people like
youthis random account that is totally not you cannot get away with running bots to mass downvote thingsyouthis random account that is totally not you don’t like.I remember this being an issue when I first joined, to an instance admin is a simple as performing an SQL query .
Unfortunately Lemmy is full of people who can’t stand criticism and actually prefer having it this way, instead of finding a compromise.
Has noone told the mods of the 90/9/1 rule of the Internet? 90% lurkers, 9% commenters, and then the rare 1% that actually post stuff.
An account that performs no activity other than issuing fifty downvotes within a single minute is highly unlikely to be operated by a human, much less a typical user. This pattern is strongly indicative of an automated sockpuppet account, which explains why the dbzer0 administrators chose to ban it once the behavior was brought to their attention.
Appreciation to @lirton@lemmy.today for highlighting the issue and enabling appropriate action to be taken.
Fair enough. I didn’t see the timestamps
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I mean, zir not the ones here whining about AI. That’s you being the pissy one, isn’t it?
No no. The people who whine about stuff in a community they can avoid are the TRUE good people. Especially when they make accounts to stalk and harass members. And getting banned for it is also evil.
Harsh words. Your comment may be removed for harassment. Try editing it into more polite version, so that it will not be removed and stay here.
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harassment is a weird word to use when neither of us has pinged them and it’s entirely likely they will never see these messages.
the account that was banned downvoted 49 posts in less than a minute. that’s not human-capable behavior. and you would admit that if you weren’t a slop-brained reactionary. :slopper:
this is nothing more than a continuing of the transphobic harassment campaign by the anti-AI shitstain sloppers.
Muh left unity tho, that gives them the right to harass us but not defend ourselves.
Except it’s still targeting a user, while defending an account solely made to target the same user.
This mod has been the subject of vile, transphobic and otherwise hateful and bigoted ongoing targeted harassment for many months, simply for the sin of moderating communities dedicated to FOSS AI image generation on a few topic. It’s descended at this point into bullying and harassment. Just because you’ve decided to jump on the “fuck AI” bandwagon doesn’t give you license to harass others. Fuck off.
Thank you for standing up for Mushroom, Unruffled.
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Why don’t people who hate AI simply block the comms so they don’t see them?
And you won’t see a downvote from Hexbear because they disable all downvotes. Apparently their users cant be trusted to not abuse the feature.
Because a lot are hobbyless trolls who have nothing better to do than to spam and harass others.
Why don’t people who hate AI simply block the comms so they don’t see them?
Because that’s too little effort, they gotta make alts to spam and harass. That’s supporting artists, somehow.
It’s some pissy generative AI slop lover loser who doesn’t like people downvoting them and there is nothing wrong with saying so.
You say, to an account made solely to downvote a community they hate. Good to know it’s okay to have accounts solely made to harass communities if you don’t like them.
It was probably a HB’s alt.
Who even knows, our communities have been attacked by feddit, .world, and Hexbear.
All for different reasons
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“they” misgenders people who use set pronouns.
MysticMushroom1776’s pronouns are ze/zir. @lirton@lemmy.today.
Maybe it’s worth noting that the sentence I was quibbling about references PyroRondo, not MysticMushroom. So Mystic Mushroom’s pronouns are entirely irrelevant here. (It’s cool that ze uses ze/zir pronouns though, I want to be very clear that I’m extremely happy to use people’s pronouns if I know them, it’s just irrelevant here, because the sentence in question wasn’t referencing MysticMushroom in the first place.)
Yes I think that was worth noting, because it wasn’t super clear in your first message, which appears to have been deleted by the mods.
Yeah, sorry. Forgot about this nuance.
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