Ye Power Trippin' BastardsNot 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.
an account only used to downvote, being championed by a new account with no history. did your sockpuppet getting banned bother you that much?
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
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.
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.
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 you actually understand how to implement all that maybe you should go contribute to PieFed.
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.
I bet 10 dollars, that mod hasn't even send a message to that person asking what that was a thing.
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?
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.
Nothing is private on the Fediverse.
Kbin used to publicly show them. It’s a design choice of the software not too.
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.
Not really a design choice. It's just not possible to hide due to federation
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.
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.
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.
Community moderators can also see who has upvoted or downvoted on their own communities.
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
Hmm... Okay, thanks for the info.
Lemmy certainly isn't a very privacy-respecting platform.
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.
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.
I browse the modlog often.
This is nothing new. The AI "art" comms (it's probably just one mod but I don't know) often have hissy fits about people who don't like AI, and if people downvote them, those people get banned. I have never interacted with any of them, either the banned or the banners, but seeing people banned from stable diffusion comms for downvoting happens all the time, like several times a week, at minimum.
@robot_dog_with_gun@hexbear.net is right. It's some pissy generative AI slop lover loser who doesn't like people downvoting them and there is nothing wrong with saying so. That said, downvotes as a function suck, it's better when instances disable them. But if they are present on an instance, I don't think it's necessarily a bad rule that if accounts with no activity do nothing but downvote everything, they should catch a ban. Mostly because it sounds like bot activity. But whatever, it used to be mildly amusing to see the drama in the modlog due to the fragility of AI slop prompters, but it's so common that all novelty has long ago worn off.
As for seeing votes, mods can see who votes up or down on anything in the comm they mod. This might depend a bit on instance, but in general, I think that's the case. Admins can see who up or downvotes anything. And yes, there is a tool that in theory can show anyone who votes and how. Like this post for instance: https://lemvotes.org/post/lemmy.today/post/51863842 However, from my understanding, an instance can disable this from working, so that tool is basically opt-out. You won't see a hexbear name in the up or downvotes at lemvotes.org because hexbear has that disabled.
he/she
Please just say "they". It's easier/shorter/cleaner and also doesn't exclude nonbinary people
MysticMushroom1776's pronouns are ze/zir. @lirton@lemmy.today.
Yeah, sorry. Forgot about this nuance.
looks like a pissy generative ai loser
I mean, zir not the ones here whining about AI. That's you being the pissy one, isn't it?
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.
sometimes the truth is harsh
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.
