Hello everyone. We recently defederated from the two instances below. In the interest of transparency, I am opening this discussion post as a place for our users to discuss any questions or concerns.

  • chinese.lol
  • lemmy.doesnotexist.club

Both instances were identified in a recent post (https://hackertalks.com/post/8713785) for harboring suspected vote manipulation accounts. The spoiler in that post names 49 suspicious accounts. A bit of database digging on our side confirmed that all of those accounts are being used solely for coordinated downvoting of a small number of Lemmy users. They are also only the tip of the iceberg; at least 92 other accounts on these two instances also match the same pattern of behavior.

We have reached out to the admins, and have not received a reply. Until we hear otherwise, these two instances are considered unmoderated and have been defederated.

That is all. Have a great Friday!

  • PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    1 month ago

    Any interesting patterns in the users being systematically targeted for downvotes? Wondering if this is personal grudge or enemy action, basically.

    • Universal Monk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Wondering if this is personal grudge

      Definitely a personal grudge. It was against someone who the downvoter was convinced is an alt of mine (it’s not).

      Several months ago, I mentioned how weird it was for someone to have an ai girlfriend in general, not calling anyone out directly. One particular dude stalked me for months over that comment, and serial downvoted everything I did.

      Then he put his sights on someone else (the subject of the scenario in OP’s example), wrongly thinking it was me, and started stalking and harassing them, and calling them my name. Literally saying, “I know you’re Universal Monk!” Over and over. Again, the person he thought was an alt of me, isn’t me. I don’t have any alt names. I just use my Universal Monk name on any instance I use.

      As soon as it was mentioned that the serial downvoter guy may be involved in sending the Nicole fediverse chick spam (many of the same addys, obsession, etc), the downvoter deleted his account.

      I have no idea if he was involved in the nicole spam, but the M.O. of revenge and obsession definitely fit the profile for both the incidents. Also pretty suspicious that the minute someone mentioned he may be involved in Nicole spam, he bailed and deleted his main account and a lot of his alt accounts. lol

      • PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        2 days ago

        Oh wow, that is indeed pretty telling lol. Sounds like a pretty troubled and unhappy person, I hope they find peace (and stop harassing others, that’s unacceptable regardless…).

        • Universal Monk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          What’s also funny is that now that people are finally talking about “serial downvoters” being a problem—and now that more users can actually see who’s doing the downvoting—a lot of those serial downvoters have suddenly stopped.

          Personally, I’ve noticed a huge difference. For a long time, it didn’t matter what I posted—no matter the subject, I’d get flooded with downvotes almost instantly. That’s just stopped.

          Now the voting feels way more natural and organic—based on content, not just someone hating me and hitting downvote the second they see my name.

          • PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            2 days ago

            That’s definitely an improvement, I’d hate to see Lemmy get co-opted, but I guess it’ll happen in various ways if it gets big enough. One concerning trend I think I’ve noticed is bad faith arguments (trolling, in a word) against leftist talking points. Could just be sincere disagreement and I’m chasing ghosts, but I’ve seen some stuff that looks REAL fishy.

            • Universal Monk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              Could just be sincere disagreement and I’m chasing ghosts, but I’ve seen some stuff that looks REAL fishy.

              Agreed. But another problem is that some people think anyone who disagrees with them is a troll.

              Just today, I got banned from two communities. The reason? According to the mod: “known zero-sum narcissistic troll/spam user.” Which is wild, because I’ve barely posted in either place. I never said anything political or controversial as far as I can tell—and none of my comments were even removed.

              And I think the last time I posted there was a few weeks ago?! LMAO.

              The only thing I can figure is that some mod or admin saw me posting elsewhere, remembered they hated me for being a Socialist, and made up a reason to ban me. Totally random. Totally ok, their community. Their rules. Just like my community, my rules (as in I ban serial downoters).

              No real loss—I rarely comment there anyway, and apparently nothing I said was bad enough to delete. Still, banned.

              Lemmy’s a strange place. The echo-chamber mentality might be what kills it in the end though. If it turns into Reddit 2.0, what’s the point? And I am adding to the echo chamber by banning serial downvoters. So, meh…

              I love Lemmy, but I can totally see it withering if it becomes harder to navigate and more toxic than Reddit. That said, I refuse to be bullied off the platform. I’ll be here until the servers go dark.

              But I’m on PieFed, and really loving that platform too. So no big loss if Lemmy goes away, because I’m already on the Lemmy replacement. :)

        • Universal Monk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, I feel the same. So sad that they are so obsessive that they let things like posting on Lemmy take over their lives. I’ll never understand people like that. It’s just Lemmy and none of this is real life. lol

          • PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            2 days ago

            You do you, but I’ve learned not to be critical of that kind of scenario. It may not be the majority of folks who are kind of “terminally online” but there’s enough people out there that would really love a greater IRL social life and simply cannot have one, either due to disability or other reasons. For plenty of folks this is as real as it gets and my heart goes out to them. We don’t have to be mean to those folks to call out this one :)

    • kersploosh@sh.itjust.worksOP
      14·
      1 month ago

      The targeted accounts are all outspoken users with very similar political opinions. I assume whoever is running the downvote accounts doesn’t like their politics.

  • Draconic NEO@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    1 month ago

    Yeah I think defederation is probably a good idea here, especially given the fact that these instances in addition to being used primarily for vote manipulation, seemingly also have no legitimate engagement whatsoever. Can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t really.