this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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

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

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Hey folks! Just realized something that makes Lemmy different from Reddit. Because of the federation, your votes are not technically anonymous on Lemmy. At least, I think.

Although there’s no UI to look at a user’s voting history yet, one could conceivably be built by an instance. Perhaps coincidentally, I hear there’s instances out there populated by mostly bots?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This would be interesting to see if certain articles were pushed up or down by bot accounts.

This could be anywhere from news articles being buried/promoted or by hidden advertising within a post.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True! Also instances could each do their own brand of “vote manipulation mitigation” by counting or ignoring different sources of votes.

Other cool features come to mind, like having a separate vote count for voters from the local instance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Other cool features come to mind, like having a separate vote count for voters from the local instance.

That'd be cool. Like a big colorful number representing the total votes and then a smaller number right below that in parenthesis and a gray color to indicate local instance votes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's interesting, tho I'd rather have that info seen by admins only, it could lead to brigading/harassment otherwise IMO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you identify a bot account?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they vote in a way I don't like, they're a bot. If they don't vote in a way that I like, also a bot. In fact, if they vote at all, probably a bot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Undercook the fish? Bot, believe it or not.