I want to make signing up to my instance as unattractive to bots and vote manipulation as possible. If I could turn off all voting on Lemmy I absolutely would. I think activitypub votes are spam and just because reddit used them doesn’t mean that it should be required. I used forums and other websites for a long time before Reddit even existed without voting and my time with Reddit and now Lemmy has left me unconvinced that it is worth while. I think engagement with comments is the only thing worth anything on this platform and some day I’d like to see a sorting algorithm that only took traffic and comments into account for scoring.

Anyway, I try my best to review the users who sign up and the comments that are made to my instance. I typically deny new applicants with disposable email addresses as well.

But there are some accounts that were created that have no activity that I can see easily from lemmy-ui and I’m not really at the point where I am reviewing SQL database. I want to confirm disabling downvotes at least prevented that kind of bot activity and I was wondering if there is anything else I can be doing? I can see how upvoting fascist and western centric points of view can also be problematic by boosting a state actor’s propaganda in a mirror of downvotes silencing minority views.

  • Alliegaytor[she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
    8·
    4 days ago

    I tested it using the api on this instance /api/v3/post/like and I was unable to downvote any post. I also tried /api/v3/comment/like and it would also fail due to {"error":"downvotes_are_disabled"}⏎ .

    I made sure to try and downvote a comment/post on an instance with downvotes enabled.

    Not sure why people are saying you can, unless I’ve completely screwed this up, but it seems that downvotes don’t work at all via the api if it’s disabled.

    curl 
    curl --request POST \
     --url https://vegantheoryclub.org/api/v3/post/like \
     --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (X12; Linux x86_128) Gecko/19840101 0.821/xoferiF" \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer REDACTED ' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "score": -1,
  "post_id": 362154
}
'
  • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.net
    4·
    3 days ago

    they can downvote if their instance is federated with yours, the downvotes won’t federate though and will only be seen by users on the same instance.

    look at some hexbear posts from lemmy.ml and lemm.ee for instance.

    Woops read this the wrong way around. No they can’t at least not with the UI. Look at any lemm.ml or lemm.ee post from hexbear.

    • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I had someone test this out, if you use the API on vegantheoryclub and try to post a -1 activitypub like activity it fails. This is good for me because I was concerned bots would sign up and be silently downvoting things on other instance communities without me being able to tell.

  • minnix@lemux.minnix.devEnglish
    112·
    4 days ago

    Yes they can. The vote will not show up logged in from your instance but it will show up on the instance the user votes from.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      1·
      3 days ago

      That’s the user downvoting the copy of the post on their own instance. If OP doesn’t have downvotes then those votes won’t federate.

    • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Right, thanks. I clarified the title of the post a bit.

      What about users on my own instance? There are 50ish users now. I personally know about 30 of them and the other 20 are random sign ups, can a sign up use the api to downvote on another instance when I have downvotes disabled on my own is my question?

      I’m not really a developer but I will try and put it into activitypub words I just looked up at w3, can an actor from my instance vegantheoryclub.org use the api to do a downvote activity on a community on another instance

  • delirious_owl@discuss.online
    41·
    4 days ago

    Downvote are an important method for controlling misinformation. We do need better info in side bars informing users what the button is for and what it is not for

    • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      If you are basing your understanding on misinformation on downvotes that are easily manipulated or driven by people with agendas, then you already failed being a critical thinker.

        • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          It doesn’t seem very useful. What I see it used for is silencing opposing view points like veganism or anything that isn’t popular on Lemmy and boosting US military industrial propaganda.

          • delirious_owl@discuss.online
            2·
            3 days ago

            Mods should be banning people who downvote content that is well-cited and high effort

            I haven’t even seen an instance with a sidebar that explains what the downvote button is for.

            It has gotten much worse in the past year, but I blame the instance admins and mods for not even trying to educate their users

    • Die4Ever@programming.dev
      3·
      4 days ago

      Yeah I think of downvotes as like micro-moderation, or crowd sourced curation. It’s generally a good feature. They can be annoying sometimes but it’s better than the alternative of bad/spam posts/comments flooding your feed.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    Yes. If you want to block this, you either have to edit the source code or, at the load balancer/reverse proxy, block /api/v3/comment/like if the POST body’s JSON content contains like with value -1.

  • Markaos@lemmy.one
    3·
    4 days ago

    Not familiar with the API, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s not just a bug in Eternity (fork of Infinity), but lemmy.one doesn’t have downvotes and I don’t get the option to downvote anywhere.

    • Blaze@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      I would be careful about lemmy.one

      The admin has been missing for some time, a few people posted to the meta community and never got any answer

    • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      Disabling downvotes is a feature of Lemmy, I have it disabled on vegantheoryclub.org from the admin preferences. I don’t know though if that just disables them on Lemmy-ui and compliant apps or if it actually disables them completely. What I am concerned of is someone creating an account, not using a reputable app, and sending API calls directly to my instance to federate to others.

      • Blaze@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        4 days ago

        You can have a look at reddthat.com or Lemmy.blahaj.zone communities from other instances and see if the downvotes count are consistent

        • vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.orgOPEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          I would prefer a way to detect the manipulators from my SQL database then doing detective work to be honest. Someone else mentioned that they can actually do this so I will have to research this.