this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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[โ€“] StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot@kbin.social 96 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

@pollodiabolo, it's interesting that whenever you post, you get boosts from the same set of accounts that downvote every other thread that trends towards the top. And all this happens roughly within a 10 minute stretch! Incidentally, this happens when those other accounts post too! How strange amirite? Wonder if there's an explanation?

@journalism_died @ishitwhite @muftiboy @kilkennygriffin and way more than I can tag here

EDIT: A few more - @jeremyfurzen @riseupagainstthem @ruse-of-metacarpi @johnson_waters @cazzodicristo @at-fieldu

I suspect a bunch more just to be clear, this is not a comprehensive list. But mentioned accounts are beyond a reasonable doubt either the same person or different people collectively vote manipulating.

[โ€“] Wander@yiffit.net 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nice catch. With upvotes and downvotes being public manipulation is much more difficul

[โ€“] violetgreendev@programming.dev 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How can you see who's voting?

[โ€“] invisiblegorilla@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'm pretty sute the admins can see all the actions on the instance. This reporting is valuable as fuck to spot manipulation

Edit: replied to wrong post..

Yes @at-fieldu I know it's you too don't feel left out

[โ€“] progenyofthestars@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thanks, gonna block all these!

That wouldn't help you much sadly. This person has at least 10-15 accounts (that I can reasonably suspect based on their boosting history) and they will definitely make even more as people get to know about them. You can expect an increase in shills as kbin becomes more popular too lol.

Added a few more for ya.

[โ€“] Niello@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

It's nice to know some of the posts I've seen those accounts downvoted aren't by people who're really downvoting what the content is about.

[โ€“] sadreality@kbin.social -4 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[โ€“] StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot@kbin.social 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

OP tryna karma farm by boosting the fuck out of their posts when they're new posts (from any account), so that they make it near the top of the hot section and then they downvote the top few posts so that theirs gets pushed even further, seen them doing it a bunch of times. What a loser lmao.

[โ€“] NettoHikari@social.fossware.space 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

"Karma farming" isn't even possible on Lemmy. There's literally no total of up- and downvotes displayed anywhere. And having a meme artificially pushed to the top without reason seems to be nonsensical to me.

[โ€“] StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It's a kbin account, we have reputation points here, similar to Reddit karma. Even if they post to a lemmy community from kbin, upvotes and boosts will give them karma

Oh yes, I totally overlooked that. Should've known that when you said "boost".

[โ€“] jerkface@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There was no point to it on Reddit either but that obviously did not stop people.

Yeah, it always baffled me. At least with memes, etc. It makes sense with political content, for example. But memes? Those internet points must really trigger the dopamine.

[โ€“] orclev@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Someone coming from reddit that doesn't understand how lemmy works? Will it be a self correcting problem once they realize there's absolutely nothing to be gained by shilling posts? Will be interesting to see how this plays out. On a related note, does anyone know if you block a user are their votes still included in the totals you see for posts and comments?

Kbin has karma, OP is posting from kbin to lemmy

[โ€“] sadreality@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

I saw similar patterns in politics for news articles about politicians. I assumed it was also a shill op

[โ€“] FaceDeer@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[โ€“] blaine@kbin.social 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If you read it closely, they say they "reserve the right to" delete the accounts/data after 2 years of inactivity. They don't actually say they will.

[โ€“] at-fieldu@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ohhh now this makes more sense than the misleading headline. they're just saying "we wanna keep your data, but we also don't wanna be liable in case us having your data ever becomes a problem to us, so we reserve the right to get rid of it whenever we want for no reason and claim we never had it in the first place

[โ€“] sadreality@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Do you really think they deleted or they just cut your access?

[โ€“] Martineski@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Oh, they said that they will:

We are going to roll this out slowly and carefully, with plenty of notice:

  • While the policy takes effect today, it will not immediately impact users with an inactive account โ€” the earliest we will begin deleting accounts is December 2023.
  • We will take a phased approach, starting with accounts that were created and never used again.
  • Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email (if one has been provided).

Source: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/updating-our-inactive-account-policies/

[โ€“] Pseu@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Once the raw emails have been fed into their ad targeting system, the content of those emails loses the vast majority of its value. Storage is cheap, but not free and inactive accounts have particularly low value. So of course they'll delete the data.

[โ€“] sadreality@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Ahh this makes more sense... I would think they would still keep the raw data... Never know about future use cases.

[โ€“] src@lemmy.swrc.dev 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can you provide some context for this? What happened?

[โ€“] Martineski@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I made this post and people oppose the idea that google will actually do it

[โ€“] at-fieldu@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

ohhh now this makes more sense than the misleading headline. they're just saying "we wanna keep your data, but we also don't wanna be liable in case us having your data ever becomes a problem to us, so we reserve the right to get rid of it whenever we want for no reason and claim we never had it in the first place

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