@pollodiabolo - this user is a karma whore of epic proportions and they have made a shit load (10-15+) accounts on kbin that boost and upvote each other while sometimes mass downvoting others that have posts trending towards the top - all to farm karma.
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You will continue to see me calling out this person and their alts. This can’t and won’t become another Reddit and karma whoring folks need to be called out and discouraged.
The following accounts are all the same person and in the very unlikely event they are not, they are still collectively vote manipulating.
@pollodiabolo @journalism_died @ishitwhite @muftiboy @kilkennygriffin @jeremyfurzen @syscollapse @riseupagainstthem @ruse @johnson_waters @cazzodicristo @at @the @Schluchtschiss @fuckoffyoudumbcunt @extremelybullish @cringeminge4 @NoCunteryForOldMen @yesbabyyy @kneel_pleb
A few of these accounts have since cleared their boosting history but with some common sense it should be easy to verify.
If I get mass downvoted, be sure to see the age of the accounts as well as whether they are on this list to gauge their authenticity. I am pretty sure this won’t reach many but I’ll spam it enough times so it eventually will.
EDIT: This is not a comprehensive list and there are obviously more alts. These are beyond a reasonable doubt involved in mass self-upvoting.
EDIT2: Almost every downvote I have on this post are by accounts that were made after I posted this. They all belong to the same user that I have called out here. This is pathetic and should be proof enough that vote manipulation is something we need to deal with.
EDIT3: More accounts to add to the list: @puny_human @latvianbloke @pedanticc @SONOFNAT
EDIT4: And now they’ve started to remove their downvotes from new accounts and add them from the list. Bruh I don’t even get it at this point. I’m just gonna go to bed that person’s a headache to figure out honestly. Night y’all.
Name and shame karma farmers.
EDIT5: This is an excellent example, you might see some familiar names
The problem is one of those evolutionary arms races, for a reason in your observation: if the points are useful in seeing the popularity of a given post or comment, then why not simply create a bunch of fake accounts to boost said post/comment (which is exactly what the OP was complaining about in the first place).
Individual karma ratings allow a weighting for upvotes so that, in theory, contributors who have a track record of constructive interaction can be the ones who have more influence on what rises to algorithmic prominence. But, of course, everything can be gamed, hence upvoting bot/sock puppet-rings like the one OP observed, or people buying accounts on reddit that had pre-established karma to let them astroturf away with impunity.
No idea what the long-term solution is, beyond the vague “build a community of known faces/names” which runs the opposite risk of turning cliquish or closed-off to new content. Or maybe abolishing all algorithms and just sorting everything by new (which brings us back to the ancient commenting issue of a whole chain of people saying “first!” rather than adding any meaningful observations).
The problem is one of those evolutionary arms races, for a reason in your observation: if the points are useful in seeing the popularity of a given post or comment, then why not simply create a bunch of fake accounts to boost said post/comment (which is exactly what the OP was complaining about in the first place).
Exactly, creating accounts doesn’t stop them. If a user has leverage on the editorial content of kbin, then they will multiply the accounts.
I fled reddit because stupid stuff was upvoted for popularity. If we allow the same vote system we will have the same problem here. The trolls have already learned the behavior on reddit, they are just surprised to see that their votes are public on kbin. But the underlying problem is still here.
My preference goes to “no vote” system and just rely on the report button, but it’s a complicated problem for sure. What helps us is that the population of an instance is not unlimited, like on reddit. We can use that.
Firstly, I’d say don’t let perfect be the enemy of good; there may not be a perfect system, but Reddit back when I used it was pretty good 80% of the time, until you got to the big memey subs. There’s an additional bonus here, in that activity can be seen. At first I was a little apprehensive but now I think I’m on board with it, so sock puppets can be tracked.
I don’t think individual karma ratings should be used to weigh up votes across the board, because simply put, a user shouldn’t have a bigger influence just because they got more Internet points.
I think the basic premise of all this up voting and down voting should be that it’s a form of crowd sourced moderating. Users letting other users know what was interesting and what was detrimental to the conversation. I’ve seen proposals like giving votes more context (eg a funny vote, like Steam reviews and Ars Technica’s forums), so that might help shape the quality of the crowdsourced opinions.