Call out post for a particular karma farmer on kbin.social

@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.

See top comment on this thread

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

Image in case they decide to retract their votes again

DarkThoughts,

That's not karma farming, that's straight up vote manipulation.

StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot,

Absolutely. They are doing it with the intention of karma farming because they only post shitposts and useless Reddit crap like this, but this is a serious issue if they move on to opinion posts and politics.

BootlegHermit,

Simple solution: Eliminate karma points/reputation points/likes/dislikes, all of it. People are going to find a way to game the system as long as there's a system to game.

Eggyhead,
Eggyhead avatar

I would follow a Magazine dedicated to this. I think it would benefit the Fediverse in the long run.

Edit: Also I find it funny that you call out a user for have 10-15 accounts, and that matches the current downvote number almost exactly.

PabloDiscobar,
PabloDiscobar avatar

We should seriously consider removing the upvote/downvote system completely. As discussed here, the system is too easy to abuse for bots and crazy people. Already now I have my own mass downvoters, you will have yours too sooner or later.

0xtero,
0xtero avatar

I think it would be useful to change Reputation points into two words "Positive" if > 0 and "Negative" if < 0 and leave it at that.

There's really no need to keep the points because it only feeds stupid behavior like this.
It's gamification of discussions in a place that doesn't need it - we're not hungry for MAU stats, no one cares about MAU because we don't have venture capitalists funding the service.

Get rid of Reputation points.
Use upvote/downvotes solely for page/thread sorting purposes.

Just like Mastodon has done some design choices (like not allowing re-posting with quotes), I think the threadiverse needs to have similar thoughts about the posting culture we want to cultivate.

anathema_device,
anathema_device avatar

@StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot I just don't know why people behave like this :

xuxebiko,

What do these people do with their fake internet points?

anathema_device,
anathema_device avatar

@xuxebiko buy NFTs, of course :)

xuxebiko,

LMFAO!

thanks, I needed that laugh.

MauroPantin,

I think karma should only be visible on posts and not on people's profiles. The usability factor un voting ideas, topics and threads is great. Highly valuable feature.

Karma for users? Useless. It creates a sense of popularity contest, and it's everything that's wrong with social media.

Let's give merits or demerits to ideas, opinions and topics of discussion and let's take the Ego element out of the equation

Ignacio,
Ignacio avatar

Lemmy works that way. There is neither karma nor reputation in any place. You can upvote and, where it's allowed, downvote, but nothing more.

ryan,

Agreed.

And while it's always still possible for someone to manipulate the system to make their posts more visible, it's the responsibility of users to report these folks and instance moderators and admins to ban them. (My instance is very small so I won't be doing much by banning them from my side, but at least I won't see or engage with any of their content!)

Gamers_Mate,

As someone who uses Both kbin and lemmy I started removing my upvotes on lemmy because I thought did it by accident until I realized with lemmy it does that automatically when you post something making the default score 1 but on kbin it is 0 because it does not do that. Still the idea of upvoting yourself to get a higher point score just seems silly.

!deleted120200, (edited )

deleted_by_author

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    Virkkunen,
    Virkkunen avatar

    Interestingly enough, Turbostrider27 was my most down voted user there. I'm fairly certain that posts on r/Games were removed so they could post them and farm the karma. Turbostrider was also the only poster during r/Games pathetic attempt of a protest.

    StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot,

    Nice catch! And would you look at the boosters of amnesiac7's trending post

    This is crazy

    PabloDiscobar,
    PabloDiscobar avatar

    This magic moment when while talking about "the adventures of awkwardtehturtle on reddit" we realized that he was among us, downvoting all our stuff. Someone pointed at the activity tab "hey guys, look!" and it was a reveal for us.

    amnesiac7,
    amnesiac7 avatar

    Hey fuckface. Yes, I blocked you. No, I'm not turtle. Do you have some type of obsession with me?

    CatBookCat,
    CatBookCat avatar

    is it weird that i don't care? i don't care about oodles karma. 0 fucks to give. why do people care?

    DoucheAsaurus,
    DoucheAsaurus avatar

    Dude is just some tool trying to play the same games he played on reddit. Deserves an IP ban if you ask me.

    PabloDiscobar,
    PabloDiscobar avatar

    Well, when all your posts will start with a minus 5 and become invisible maybe you will start to care? Because you WILL have your haters too. Some people are that crazy.

    Virkkunen,
    Virkkunen avatar

    I do care because even though these virtual point mean fuck all, users will degrade everyone's experience to try and farm them. We'll be getting low quality, rage-bait inducing posts, reposts being boosted to the top and actual good content being overshadowed just because an arsehole wants bigger numbers

    Chozo,
    Chozo avatar

    Wow, would you take a look at the accounts who reduced this post. It's almost like they saw it as a roll-call.

    princessofcute,
    princessofcute avatar

    What's dumb is reputation doesn't even do anything on Kbin right now other than make you go "haha I have higher number than you" so reputation farming is a total waste of time. Personally I hope it stays that way as it will deter the farmers, I can see some of the benefits of the karma system in Reddit but it's just too prone to manipulation to be actually useful in any way.

    StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot,

    "haha I have higher number than you"

    This is exactly what some people are after. It lets them believe they are oh so better for having no life outside of the internet. And content quality on kbin suffers in the process.

    Drusas,

    Back in the Fark days, it was, "I have a lower number than you!" (an older account). People will always find something to latch onto.

    Pons_Aelius,

    "I have a lower number than you!"

    Same with the old slashdot days.

    ( Years before the reddit huge of death there was getting slashdotted.)

    Drusas,

    Fark called it "getting Farked".

    sotolf,
    sotolf avatar

    Back in the old forum days it was about having the biggest amount of posts :p

    atocci,
    atocci avatar

    It didn't do anything on reddit either as far as I'm aware, and yet people still went for it like they were trying to get the high score.

    ozen,
    ozen avatar

    I think you could make a small amount of money for selling a reddit account with high karma...but that's the only thing I ever heard of it being useful for.

    phoenixes,

    It also grants a small amount of credibility of not being some random new account shill or whatever, but given how accounts can be sold, it doesn't really do that if you're paying any attention

    princessofcute,
    princessofcute avatar

    It was sometimes used for posting, like you had to have a certain amount of karma to post in certain subs

    atocci,
    atocci avatar

    That's a fair point, I forgot that was a thing that could be done. Was that useful? Do you think it's something that should be possible here in the future?

    stopthatgirl7,
    stopthatgirl7 avatar

    As someone who was mostly a lurker on Reddit, it was really annoying, actually. The rare times I wanted to comment on something, only to be hit with being told my karma was too low, so I couldn’t? It put me off those subreddits fast and ended up made me less likely to try to comment on things.

    Ignacio,
    Ignacio avatar

    The only thing it did on Reddit was to limit who could join a subreddit or who could post something in a subreddit.

    minnieo,
    minnieo avatar

    It must stay that way. High rep shouldn't affect anything at all.

    static,
    static avatar

    I have not looked into the details, but this makes a solid case for public up/downvotes, it makes fuckery public.

    FaceDeer,
    FaceDeer avatar

    Definitely. The public nature of voting means that it should be possible for anyone to write a bot that spots these patterns automatically.

    Whether instance admins do anything about it is a separate matter, but at least everyone will know whether they're doing something about it.

    livus,
    livus avatar

    Off topic but I just love your name/image so much!

    FaceDeer,
    FaceDeer avatar

    Why thank you. :) It was a name I picked kind of randomly years ago when I decided to respond to a Reddit comment and needed to register an account, and I just happened to have seen the Endless Forest right beforehand. I never actually played it, though. It's since become my default online handle despite none of my interests being specifically oriented towards deer.

    Then when I saw that Kbin/Lemmy allowed profile images I created a couple of potential avatars using Stable Diffusion and then cropped down my favourite.

    livus,
    livus avatar

    Well, it's magical! It reminds me slightly of the forest spirit in Princess Mononoke but way more striking. Strange how these things come into being.

    I really need to get a proper avatar. I just grabbed the first thing I saw that was the right size from my image folder.

    Edit: omg those images are all fantastic. You can have a whole FaceDeer empire.

    minnieo,
    minnieo avatar

    I was on the fence about the voting being public, some people may not wanna get shit for agreeing with one point or another was one point I saw (they may not feel they can vote freely) but it certainly does force accountability.

    Pons_Aelius,

    You seem to have struck a chord...

    All three (make that 4) downvotes are from accounts younger than this post.

    Some new accounts to add to the list:

    @latvianbloke

    @puny_human

    @pedanticc

    ...

    @SONOFNAT

    lowdownfool,
    lowdownfool avatar

    Funny, I noticed latvianbloke downvoting an article on the Philly shooting where kids got hurt.

    StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot,

    Yup bahahah, I already expected that. Those are rookie numbers - this person is on another level and there are a LOT more to come. I'd love to see how long they waste their life on this.

    minnieo,
    minnieo avatar

    How many damn emails does this person have? Lmfao

    Pons_Aelius,

    If you spend a few bucks to register a domain name?

    A number only limited to your self-control (and self-respect) to rig votes that give you nothing IRL.

    So, for this person, I am guessing hundreds.

    CoWizard,

    To say it gives you nothing IRL is ignorant of the online social engineering these platforms can do

    Pons_Aelius,

    Ignorant?

    This whole thread is an example of people who are very aware of what is possible with social engineering online and calling it out on a new platform in an attempt to at least slow the influx.

    The person who is creating accounts like the energiser bunny hitting the skins is trying to use reddit tactics that have been well known since that crow vs corvid user was found boosting their content.

    The difference here is that, since votes are public, their attempts are very transparent.

    0xtero,
    0xtero avatar

    No need to spend money on domains. Gmail allows for endless aliases. Just one Gmail account is enough.

    quantum_hampster,

    This is already being looked into. Kbin doesn’t have to form validation in place yet, but it’s on the list to prevent spammers.
    Essentially it will prevent emails with plus signs and periods in them

    lowdownfool,
    lowdownfool avatar

    plus signs and periods in them

    That would be a mistake, those are valid characters for an email address.

    quantum_hampster,

    You’re correct. I misstated.
    Plus signs however are by and large used for aliases.

    That being said, the elephant in the room isn’t Gmail or mail aliases.

    PabloDiscobar,
    PabloDiscobar avatar

    Nice trick since you can hardly ban gmail as an admin.

    Pamasich,
    Pamasich avatar

    You can't ban gmail, but it shouldn't be too hard to add countermeasures against it.

    eltimablo,

    You don't even need to do that. There are email providers that will allow you to make an unlimited number of email aliases that all point back to the same address. Fastmail is one that comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

    Pamasich,
    Pamasich avatar

    No need, gmail gives you virtually infinite emails. Just tested it out, kbin doesn't have countermeasures against it in place. You can use one gmail email to create as many accounts as you want.

    StopMassDownvotingYouIdiot,

    And this is what I'm talking about lol, see any familiar names?

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