Hello, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but is anyone else being massively downvoted on every comment? I noticed this started happening after the DDOS attacks on lemmy.world. If you check my profile, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Almost as soon as I post a comment it’s at -10, etc.
Have I pissed off someone, or is it a possible bot attack? I try to keep most of my comments cordial, which is why this is confusing me. Thanks.
This looks weird to me.
- Kbin downvotes are public, you can see who made them at https://kbin.social/u/@artifice@lemmy.world. Kbin doesn’t federate downvotes from Lemmy though, so you can only see downvotes made there. I stalked your profile a bit on kbin and there was nothing weird. Mostly no downvotes, and in the few cases there were some there was no correlation of people across threads. The worst I saw was like three people downvoting a series of comments in a single thread, which is not weird or stalky.
- Downvotes are also not anonymous to Lemmy instance admins. They are recorded in Lemmy’s DB with a link to who made them. This isn’t exposed via the web-ui or app-api, so regular users cannot see them… but admins (and users with their own Lemmy instance) can.
I would consider reporting this to
info@mastodon.world. If someone is actually sockpuppeting 10-20 accounts and profile stalking, that sounds to me like bannable abuse and something the admins might be interested in looking into. Now, of course, if you’re the one who has been harassing people in old comments, moderated comments, deleted comments, or DMs… admins might decide to ban you all. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and often result in two bans. It’s also possible that admins have bigger fish to fry and won’t have time to investigate… but if I were admin I’d be interested in early instances of mass-sockpuppeting so I could think about ways to detect and react to it.Edit: As an aside, the animated profile icon is pretty annoying and it may be that people downvote just for that.
Haha, definitely haven’t harassed anyone. Didn’t even know the animated icon worked tbh, am on mobile, it’s just a static picture for me. Thanks for the tips! I’ll contact the admins/mods, maybe I can be their test dummy.
Probably because of your profile banner as it could kill/harm people with epilepsy. And for that i downvote someone tbh. As a “warning” for those in need.
I agree, I will change it as soon as I’m able. Never thought of it that way honestly. I’m curious to see if the admins can tell who, or what exactly, is behind this.
Thank you! Yeah admins will be able to tell you at least if they probably are bots.
I believe @rooki has a solid point. Your banner, and icon to a lesser extent, really hurt the eyes and if someone was epileptic it could be an issue. Not to say they aren’t neat but I could see someone getting up in arms over it.
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You know I saw your comment that “Khruangbin fucking kicks ass” yesterday and thought it was very weird that it was that downvoted that aggressively.
Yeah you’re definitely being targeted.
I know right? Who the hell doesn’t like Khruangbin?!
I haven’t seen anything like this. Definitely being cyberstalked.
Activity on your account certainly seems unusual. This post is getting 1 downvote a minute when I’m reading it, which is more engagement than usually happens on Lemmy, good or bad.
Fortunately accounts are free and the points meaningless.
But, you could find out. Abandon this account for a time and come back. If the insta-downvotes start again then you know it’s bots, if not then you get to laugh at the someone or someones that wasted all that time… Well they still wasted their time even to set up bots but you know what I mean.
You could also ignore or migrate. I don’t think Lemmy is equipped to tackle this kind of trolling, except that accounts are free and the points meaningless. To me that’s solution enough, YMMV on how attached you get to your account though.
Didn’t mean that as a reply, just a comment, my bad.
The total point count on your profile may be meaningless, but votes on a comment/post absolutely have an effect within context. If you want to post to a community about something, the post may never get seen by many if it amasses a bunch of down votes. If you want to weigh in on a subject in a particular thread, a down voted opinion will be drown out by all the other comments.
Interesting, you get alerts for replies on deleted comments, I deleted and reposted as a stand alone as that’s what I originally intended to do.
I agree though, I think the correct solution for OP is migrate, and that’s what they said they’re going to do. Fortunately, accounts are free and the points meaningless.
I don’t think ignoring is that bad a solution though. Rarely is Lemmy so active downvoted comments are relegated to the shadowrealm.
Yeah, it’s extremely strange. Seems like I’m being targeted by bots. Useless internet points and all, but it’s a bit alarming that I’ve been singled out this way.
It might just be that your username is alphabetically near the start of the most popular instance.
There is currently a fascist brigade attempting to inflict itself on the fediverse. It’s possibly related, they do use bots.
Fortunately accounts are free and the points meaningless.
But, you could find out. Abandon this account for a time and come back. If the insta-downvotes start again then you know it’s bots, if not then you get to laugh at the someone or someones that wasted all that time… Well they still wasted their time even to set up bots but you know what I mean.
You could also ignore or migrate. I don’t think Lemmy is equipped to tackle this kind of trolling, except that accounts are free and the points meaningless. To me that’s solution enough, YMMV on how attached you get to your account though.
and the points meaningless.
They are and they aren’t. They’re not meaningless when you’re trying to find actual information and a legitimate helpful comment is buried or disregarded because that account is being targeted by a downvote bot brigade. That actively hurts the community.
It’s why YouTube removing visible dislikes was so bad. It makes it impossible to quickly assess whether a how-to video is legitimate or full of misinformation and mistakes.
It makes it impossible to quickly assess whether a how-to video is legitimate or full of misinformation and mistakes.
I guess if someone is operating under the premise “what is popular is correct” they would find value in votecounts. I dunno, I might browse weird though; I dont read community names, usernames or look at vote count.
I always saw votes as being for the entity (YouTube, Reddit etc) so they can serve up what’s popular to users so they’re more attractive to users.
Again, lemmy is rarely active enough for comments to be banished and all of which is ignoring the fact that the numbers are meaningless just migrate.
I guess if someone is operating under the premise “what is popular is correct” they would find value in votecounts.
And a lot of people do because it works well enough in a lot of use cases. Recipes, parts recommendations, repairs, DIY, etc. A like/dislike system is pretty crucial in hobby communities. Somebody recommending a brake pad that has a significant failure rate that is well known by some people of the community, but not being able to see the 500 dislikes vs 20 likes might cause you buy and install those pads and crash because you only saw the 20 likes and assumed it was probably fine. These things are important to a lot of people.
Again, lemmy is rarely active enough for comments to be banished and all of which is ignoring the fact that the numbers are meaningless
That’s a very shortsighted view and the numbers aren’t meaningless just because you don’t look at them. They serve a purpose to a lot of people.
All roads lead to the same end though: migrate. If you care about your comment numbers migrate and the downvotes stop. Account numbers don’t grant you any special treatment so migrate because you don’t lose anything. Accounts are free and your score means nothing, just migrate.
This very much seems an argument for arguments’ sake.
This very much seems an argument for arguments’ sake.
Look you were the one that came into a thread on a specific instance support community and started arguing against votes mattering or not and I gave you some reasons why they might. They can migrate sure, but your first instinct when something breaks or something bad happens shouldn’t be “well screw it, pack it up and go elsewhere” it should be “trouble shoot it and try to fix it”. If nothing else works then migrating is probably a legitimate course of action.
Except you came to me and didn’t do any of those things that you said that you should. That’s fine, this is unproductive, I’m gonna go now.
I appreciate the advice. I’ll just create a new account. I found a tool that will migrate my community/block lists, so it’ll be effortless. It is pretty funny and pathetic if you think about what’s happening with my account here. Honestly I feel weirdly honored that someone actually wasted their life on this lol.
Email and open a ticket at info@mastodon.world first. It’s better to get the Admins’ attention on this to try to get it resolved because it’s likely also happening to somebody else and there’s no guarantee that this won’t happen to your new account.
This would be contra productive as it could be considered malicious to create multiple accounts.
I’m having a similar problem, where someone mass downvoted all my comments and posts going back a month. It doesn’t seem to be ongoing though, but a one time event.
My post here: https://sh.itjust.works/post/1984538
Yeah, I’ve been in contact with a couple others stating the exact same thing. This is very interesting, I hope the admins will get back to me soon.
I have a similar problem, idiots who have a political disagreement with me have downvoted my posts, by 4 points on a few comments and up to 40 on a post - which is bad since that potentially degrades an entire community’s experience.
Who should I contact for help/info btw?
I’m not sure anyone can help you there honestly. If you’re being downvoted do to a disagreement, then that’s what the voting system is for. What’s happening to me and others is mass, targeted, downvoting. Either using a script/bots, or multiple sock puppet accounts.
Well, they downvoted unrelated comments and posts on my account. Which is an undesirable situation.
You’re probably right that it can’t be helped though.
Sorry! As I’m sure you’re well aware, some people can be very immature online, under the veil of anonymity.
I’ll be using an alt for purely political comments.
Iirc, the names of the accounts making up- and down-votes is part of the information that’s synced between instances, and so available to admins if they care to look. Wonder if there could be some sort of mod tool to identify coordinated vote manipulation
Stop caring about upboats. Say what you want. This is not Reddit.
At the same time downvotes can often be used to push down dumb or unhelpful comments to make good or helpful ones more visible and can be used to kind of put up a red flag to whoever is reading it. It’s the same reason people are complaining about YouTube removing visible dislikes on videos and why the Return YT Dislikes extension is so important. It’s often (not always) a quick way to see if a video will be worth watching, especially when it comes to how-to/repair videos.
If I’m on a motorcycle community and I’m asking about what’s the best type of front brakes on my particular year and model of a bike and I see a comment with a ton of downvotes, it’s kind of a red flag to me to examine that comment more carefully and maybe not take it at face value. There’s a good chance that it’s bad advice.
They serve a purpose and purposefully muddying up this system does do some harm to the platform.
I don’t really care, it just feels weird being targeted like this.
