We had a couple of reports today of vote manipulation happening in the Australia community. After investigating, I'm seeing a trend:
https://aussie.zone/post/21203876
https://aussie.zone/post/21124048
https://aussie.zone/post/21194319
https://aussie.zone/post/21130833
The votes in all these posts look like this. In this example, only two of the downvotes look legitimate. The rest are coming from three instances that don't appear to be real Lemmy sites. One of them doesn't even resolve.
Hmm, looks suss.
I read a comment somewhere recently that the upvotes and downvotes don't really do anything on Lemmy.
If thats the case, is their seeming coordination for downvoting having a meaningful effect?
Votes 100% matter in Lemmy. It certainly affects the 'hot' sort type.
It affects literally every sort type except new
There are no karma totals like on Reddit but people still do take fake internet points seriously.
With that being said some instances will remove the option to down vote to "prevent" this kind of thing.
I don't take fake internet points seriously! Who would do that!
I've barely even noticed that both the people who have replied to my comment have a higher upvote total than me.
Nope, i don't care at all!
Not on iota!
Okay, maybe a little.. /j :p
I browse by new so most posts I see are 1-5 votes either way.