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.
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.
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.
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 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.
