Unidan could just create an account on multiple instances and vote for his posts/comments with all these accounts. That way his content would gain more attention than those of sincere users.

In case of malicious bots (like those annoying bootleg bots on reddit), it might even be profitable for them to create their own instance(s) just for that purpose.

Is there a mechanism to prevent that? (other than user/instance banning and the introduction question on user creation)

  • rowdy
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Malicious instances would need to be blocked by the instance you are registered to.

    As for multiple accounts - couldn’t the same thing be done on reddit? Just make a bunch of alts and self-inflate your own posts/comments.

    These issues are as old as the internet and can only be mitigated, not prevented.

    • CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah it’s a cat and mouse game sadly…

      Malicious instances would need to be blocked by the instance you are registered to.

      Couldn’t they keep the instance running and just change the domain name? Or if not easily possible, then just have a setup script that creates a new instance under the new domain name with X number of users.

      As for multiple accounts - couldn’t the same thing be done on reddit? Just make a bunch of alts and self-inflate your own posts/comments.

      Sure, but as mentioned it might be easier with Lemmy since they could just run their own instance. Or maybe it’s harder because Lemmy admins check account creation better on their own instance and are more sceptical of other instances.

      It’s an interesting topic, time will tell how it’s gonna be. It certainly isn’t bad to talk about it already today. ;)

      • rowdy
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Agreed - time will tell. I’m sure there will be growing pains, but with that, the moderation tools will improve.

        A little wild west never killed nobody… wait…

    • samick1@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m 99% sure reddit does a lot of backflips to detect and prevent that. One casual bad actor can only burn up so many IP addresses or API keys in a short period, and I think there’s some undisclosed/“secret” logic to it. It’s like burglary - you can’t stop it but you can cost the burglar sufficient time or money to deter them.

      I haven’t dug into Lemmy’s code yet but I am curious what countermeasures against abuse are apart of federation. Signed, time-boxed tokens and IP addresses could be part of the protocol to mitigate abuse via federation.