Fundamentally, though, how can it be stopped? The two instance administrators can only see part of what’s happening, and can’t directly determine that the votes are coming from two alts of the same user. Maybe over enough times, the patterns can be guessed at with heuristics, but this kind of vote manipulation is going to be a problem for federated communities. Especially if we don’t get better moderation tools developed.
What’s the mechanism by which an admin would be able to tell if one user voted more than once on the same post? Instance admins can’t see the votes of the accounts on other instances.
vote manipulation is going to be a problem for federated communities
I guess, but since the feed isn’t algorithmically created to maximize engagement (the tools are better than commercially driven sites) I don’t think it matters as much. I think of it as a “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” condition - everything is made up and the points don’t matter. And, tbh, I really like that I can click into a stupid-x story without worrying that I’ll be fed stupid-x content for the next week. It’s worth a little vote tomfoolery, imho.
Reddit does have vote manipulation, but reddit admins can easily see much stronger indicators of the same person behind multiple user accounts: Server logs of user agent, IP address, interface/API key, script support and activity that tends to give away browser type and history, etc.
Most of that information is only available to instance admins, so admins of one instance can’t see when external votes are coming in from the same users who already voted using accounts on your instance.
Most of that information is only available to instance admins, so admins of one instance can’t see when external votes are coming in from the same users who already voted using accounts on your instance.
Admins can see how users vote, even external users. So it’s no different from local users on the same instance (which would be how reddit operates). So I don’t see how this is different.
The instance I’m logged into doesn’t forward my user agent, IP address, or CSS/script support (or other fingerprinting techniques) to the other instance. Everything I do in a community hosted on another instance is forwarded through my instance server as a middleman, and I never directly connect to the other instance server.
The admins of an instance (or reddit) might be able to analyze server logs of different users on their own instance to be able to determine those things, but can’t apply that analysis to accounts from other instances, whose interaction with the server doesn’t actually include a login or any direct connections to the server they administer. All they have to go on is the ActivityPub logs, which won’t include that fingerprinting information.
Fundamentally, though, how can it be stopped? The two instance administrators can only see part of what’s happening, and can’t directly determine that the votes are coming from two alts of the same user. Maybe over enough times, the patterns can be guessed at with heuristics, but this kind of vote manipulation is going to be a problem for federated communities. Especially if we don’t get better moderation tools developed.
That’s kind of what I wanted to point out with this post.
deleted by creator
What’s the mechanism by which an admin would be able to tell if one user voted more than once on the same post? Instance admins can’t see the votes of the accounts on other instances.
deleted by creator
I guess, but since the feed isn’t algorithmically created to maximize engagement (the tools are better than commercially driven sites) I don’t think it matters as much. I think of it as a “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” condition - everything is made up and the points don’t matter. And, tbh, I really like that I can click into a stupid-x story without worrying that I’ll be fed stupid-x content for the next week. It’s worth a little vote tomfoolery, imho.
This is not exclusive to federated communities. Reddit has vote manipulation too.
Reddit does have vote manipulation, but reddit admins can easily see much stronger indicators of the same person behind multiple user accounts: Server logs of user agent, IP address, interface/API key, script support and activity that tends to give away browser type and history, etc.
Most of that information is only available to instance admins, so admins of one instance can’t see when external votes are coming in from the same users who already voted using accounts on your instance.
Admins can see how users vote, even external users. So it’s no different from local users on the same instance (which would be how reddit operates). So I don’t see how this is different.
The instance I’m logged into doesn’t forward my user agent, IP address, or CSS/script support (or other fingerprinting techniques) to the other instance. Everything I do in a community hosted on another instance is forwarded through my instance server as a middleman, and I never directly connect to the other instance server.
The admins of an instance (or reddit) might be able to analyze server logs of different users on their own instance to be able to determine those things, but can’t apply that analysis to accounts from other instances, whose interaction with the server doesn’t actually include a login or any direct connections to the server they administer. All they have to go on is the ActivityPub logs, which won’t include that fingerprinting information.