are there bots that downvote every comment users have?
i’ve seen quite a few users with one downvote on every single comment for no reason and it makes me wonder if people are disagreeing, stalking users, or just a weird bot account.
Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemm.eeView original on lemm.ee
57 replies
It seems off and on, I routinely have one downvote show up on every thing, including totally benign “hahah cute cat” type comments, or comments that are otherwise well received.
It started happening after I criticized Israel for genocide. (Specifically around the time that there was that giant missile barrage right at the start of the Israeli response.)
Checking my recent comments it seems to be off at the moment.
https://votes.gregtech.eu/ by @[email protected]
I used the tool and it looks like I have a downvoting stalker that dutifully downvotes my posts and comments. Aww... that's so cute!
They seem pro-palestine, or at least anti-genocide. I think they just don't like me. Who knows? Still flattered.
Just fyi, this only works on Lemmy but not Piefed or other software.
No way! Now that I noticed it, it is a source of entertainment.
Part of me has wanted this for a long time. The other part of me wants to forget I now know about it.
At least the handful I checked seem to be random, so likely accidental, but I can see this driving me crazy.
Users with one downvote on every recent comment/post is usually some other user raging and being incapable of accepting other people's opinions.
I think we have a few knuckleheads who think it improves the algorithm and don't realize that Lemmy doesn't work that way.
i.e. meh, not my type of post. I don't care about trains. Downvote! Similar idea with comments thinking somehow it will show them better comments.
I sooner attribute this to ignorance rather than malice.
Votes mean less on Lemmy than they did on Reddit. So we can sweat it less what people do with them. Not a big deal.
The votes are public but inaccessible in UI. You can check them.
https://votes.gregtech.eu/
I made this tool to check votes on a comment/post, and I am working on an option to see all votes a user has cast
Now, this is interesting. As far as I know, all of the public threadiverse softwares specifically hide this info (especially downvotes), while acknowledging that the way ActivityPub works, the information is public anyway and you're really just making it slightly less accessible. An open service like this essentially removes all of the supposed barriers (e.g. "Most users don't know how to set up their own instance in order to see downvotes.") which are claimed to keep this info private.
What kind of effect does knowing exactly which people downvoted you have on a platform? Is there a chilling effect on downvotes, is there revenge downvoting? I guess we'll find out. It's less easy to see the upsides of knowing this info, beyond being able to confirm whether or not you're being stalked by persistent downvoters.
@[email protected] Did you have any particular thoughts around the ethics of this tool when you decided to make and share it? Not trying to call you out in any way, just interested to hear how you feel about it. Ultimately, if it wasn't you it would be somebody else, so the direct impact is probably negligible.
Thanks for the question, I believe the illusion of privacy is worse than the lack of privacy. Currently, non-technical users or newbies think that their votes are private, which they are definitely not. Someone could spin up an instance and see the votes, which users cast without thinking about how private they really are.
I will also write a blog post about this tool and its ethics.
Nice, I'll look forward to reading that, thanks!
Your point re: the illusion of privacy makes sense. Most Lemmy/other threadiverse users are probably used to platforms where that data is not public and I don't think any of the softwares really highlight that it's different here. It's easy to get a false impression of privacy.
Yeah Lemmy should make it clearer that your votes are not private
Other software like Piefed you actually do get private votes.
Its a bit easier than just pasting the link into friendica.
It's not like we haven't had public downvoting in the fediverse yet. We already found out in the past.
Kbin had public downvotes and the main effect was that people put more thought into their downvotes. While I assume it wasn't without abuse, I've never seen it brought up as an active problem, just something that could theoretically happen.
Thanks, this is a really handy tool. Kniwing the information was being withheld 'just because' was really rankling me. Now, could you just add a quick feature to read their minds and tell me why they down voted me? ;)
AI hallucinations as a feature :3
Clients couldn't add it, they would need admin access to do so
https://lemmy.readme.io/reference/get_post-like-list
Failed to fetch votes, classic
Huh, may I see the URL you used? And did you select the proper option (post/comment)?
I selected your comment from my instance
https://lemmy.selfhostcat.com/comment/612568
I kinda have no idea why this doesn't work @_@. The canonical URL does work though.
Maybe my server was too slow to respond?
I think it can't fetch votes from a non-origin instance, for now I will add a warning until I fix it
Cool, thanks!
Nice! Any chance you could have it filter by community? Would be useful as a mod to see who's downvoting a lot in a comm
I will try, this is my first serious project so uhh no guarantees :P
Achievement unlocked! You've gained your first unreasonably demanding user!
Not unreasonable at all, I just suck at software development :3
The unreasonable part comes later 😜
May I have the post URLs you tried so I can troubleshoot?
They didn't work because they're not from the poster/commenter's instance. As it says on votes.gregtech.eu, currently the URL has to be from the poster's instance. I am working on a better way to do this.
Aaaand I fixed it. The URL can be from any instance now!
I clarified it rn
I'm very interested in why some posts from the same servers will fetch results on some posts and not others.
Very cool!
I've checked several posts with one dv. Only one hasn't worked so far, which is weird, because it stemmed from the same instance as several others. There is one user showing up from lemme.ee several from .world, and an odd other instance, here and there. I'm wondering if the one that didn't show up was some magazine mod's protection against it?
Lol! Guess from which instance my comment dvs originated!
Pretty sure it's just users that disagree going and downvoting latest comments. At least for me, there was a MAGAt that didn't like anti-trump stuff and gave me 1 downvote on everything I posted from that single comment, on backwards in my history for about a week or so.
I thought it was a bot at first, but then I realized it started right after my comment replying to him correcting him on his conspiracy theory stupidity cult nonsense. Everything posted after that comment received no downvotes.
When something like this happens to me I get so happy. Way to absolutely waste your time downvoting you mullet.
I remember a long time ago noticing, while sorting by new, that posts in some communities had downvotes within seconds of being posted, so yes I think there are bots.
I've had it happen with .world accounts. People are extremely petty and wear it as a badge of honor. It's pretty pathetic when they're the ones constantly pointing out the pettiness of world-stage players.
Are you seeing users with most of their comments at +/-0, or do you mean you see -1 on all their posts? I'm pretty sure there is a setting to have your own comments not automatically be upvoted by yourself. The users you have seen might just have had that turned on? Resulting in 0 for all their comments unless someone else upvotes it.
Just fyi, some Lemmy clients (e.g. Thunder, probably others) show the upvotes and downvotes distinctly, so you can easily see something like ‘2 1’ which corresponds to ‘upvotes downvotes’. It’s makes it easier to see if there are downvotes versus removed upvotes.
And in Voyager you can enable between seeing them separately or as one number.
Anyone wondering its under appearance, scroll down, display votes and there are 3 options separate, total or to hide
I see it on web browsers, in several instances.
There was one a few weeks ago.
I know that Reddit does (at least it did back when I still used it) but I'm not sure about Lemmy. I know that Lemmy does have bot accounts for other purposes, so I guess it's not impossible but I haven't heard of or seen one here.