Not “clearly” at all. It could be as simple as someone new to coding doing it accidentally, probably using masking of their request origins (granted, this does not seem very likely at all…:-D).
Also, it forces the archive to expend resources that they could have allocated elsewhere - which would have longer-term consequences far beyond the short-term duration of the attack. Enough attacks like these could cause the archive to deprioritize something else that they had wanted to do, or drop something they used to support but won’t be able to continue to do so in that case.
Or, why does a bully hit someone? That too offers purely short-term pain, until the next attack. Yet they do it anyway, and often it works to cow the victim into submission so that future attacks aren’t even necessary, and instead the mere threat of one may be sufficient for the bully to get their way.
Also, does the entire rest of the world submit funding to the internet archive? I don’t know anything about their finances, but compared to those of e.g. Russian disinformation sources or corporate profit-seeking, surely they are tiny in comparison?
The only thing “clear” here is that the attacker seems to be using the Might Is Right principle, as they are stepping outside the bounds of society to take on this vigilante effort by themselves.
Kbin: Not anymore, at least last I checked. I have an old account there that I left behind due to the enormous amount of technical glitches it kept having, and checking in on it recently (maybe last week?), not one of my comments has even a single downvote there - even older ones. iirc the “reduces” tab was still present, just entirely empty. (I was looking for a particular comment, but then while there noticed the effect was much wider.) Edit: I took another look, and I the only downvotes I see are from kbin itself (example post), so it seems to not be federating downvotes from outside of itself.
In the past when it did used to work, it also would not show downvotes from instances that it had server-wise defederated with, although someone can still get downvotes from personally blocking an instance, on a Lemmy server running v0.19.3 or greater, that the server itself had not server-wise defederated with. So there was always a very large gap there.
The reason I thought of this all was due to the OP title: e.g. someone could mass-downvote things on the Fediverse to attempt to control the conversation by de-emphasizing things that they did not personally agree with, but outside of moderator or admin reporting that offers a degree of trust behind it. Obviously that is its intended purpose, but I mean maliciously subverting that like have 10 accounts and log into all of them to influence a post.
About once a week lately I keep blocking some spammer accounts that randomly shill products or videos throughout the Fediverse, rather than wait for an admin to do it, but if an account(s) was more subtle and merely downvoted, then I doubt such a thing would even be noticed?
I should add that I respect some people’s decisions if they want to be on a server that doesn’t even record or reveal downvotes - that’s fine bc it’s their choice. But otherwise it is basically public knowledge, except as you say you need to fire up an instance of your own to view them, and then protect that instance from intrusion efforts even if you use it for nothing else (or possibly there is some API call, but I doubt that knowledge would be so easy to find, and for one thing it would have to access a database that has sent out past updates, not merely listen for new ones unless it had been running prior to the downvote event).
Anyway, I hoped people would see this post, and it seems that is happening, so this time the downvotes did not detail any conversation about the topic (with many tens-fold greater up- than down-votes), but if there had been sufficient number of downvotes delivered quickly enough… then how many of us would have even seen this, sorting Subscribed or All by Hot? So it points to a liability in the Fediverse, which at some point, someone somewhere is going to exploit.
More than a thousand Harvard students walked out of their commencement ceremony yesterday to support 13 undergraduates who were barred from graduating after they participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment in Harvard Yard....
Attending a graduation ceremony is a different thing than being able to graduate. I think I read earlier that they were banned from the former, but I had not seen where they would literally be denied their actual degree.
Thank you - THIS Is the kind of detail I have been wanting to know. The college will not simply “delete” their grades for the prior 4 years, so being placed on probation is quite a significant hardship, but less than if that were to happen. Do you happen to know if they would simply get their degree one year later, or have to be “re-admitted” to Harvard again for that to happen? (my guess is the former, or even if the latter then a streamlined re-admission process proffered)
So this sounds like “introducing a delay in getting their degree” process, rather than “banning them from ever receiving a degree from that institution for life” one.
The article mentioned someone who gets to keep their Rhodes Scholarship even, so definitely people are sympathetic, and I wonder if the main harm from all of this will fall onto the institution of Harvard itself.
In March 2023, a recruiter for Arthur Grand Technologies posted a job advertisement looking for ‘US Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates]’...
i.e., the polar opposite of peaceful coexistence and brotherhood - using violence to achieve an aim that they consider worthwhile. Didn’t more people die from the last pandemic than all wars combined? Sounds like an “opportunity” for political spin doctoring, according to some people, who would like for the wealthy to pay even less taxes than now moar power.
Ah, Idiocracy - that shining beacon of hope, where somehow the USA survives what was clearly a nation-ending process whereby nobody else around the world got dumber (e.g. in Russa or China), only us, but humans somehow gave the people in power (corporations) something valuable enough to allow to continue existence and subsistence.
Over a hundred years ago (30 years before the term “science fiction” was coined) H.G. Wells Time Machine portrayed a similar slant on the populace of the future.
The reality is that with Climate Change and automation happening as they are, even those nightmare visions seem increasingly unlikely, as the planet cannot sustain us all and robots replace the need for a worker class of humans anyway. Instead we might end up more like Half-Life where populace decrease becomes more desirable.
Travelers (2016) is an excellent TV show to watch btw - too bad we are unlikely to develop time travel to save us all.
The younger generations are big on “authenticity”. The fact that this isn’t made by a production studio for money but by someone simply for the enjoyment of their craft, is amazing! It’s not “good” compared to a Hollywood movie, but it’s fantastic for being made by one young person on their home PC, and therefore my guess is that it is quite inspiring what others can accomplish with the technology available today, if they try, and continuously develop their skills.:-)
I’ve been super fortunate with my previous purchases, so most definitely will keep that going for as long as I can to avoid spending more money. Ikr, so practical… - maybe I should consider taking a walk on the wild side! :-P
A video titled “This Video Will Make You Angry”, by CGP Grey, about how memes evolve in the same manner as living organisms, though in this case those most successful tend to be the ones that engender anger in their target audience.
The Internet Archive is under a DDoS attack (bsky.app)
Brought to you by the Department of Erasing History.
1,000 Harvard Students Walk Out of Commencement to Support 13 Seniors Barred from Graduation over Gaza (www.democracynow.org)
More than a thousand Harvard students walked out of their commencement ceremony yesterday to support 13 undergraduates who were barred from graduating after they participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment in Harvard Yard....
Tech company fined by DOJ over ‘whites only’ job posting (www.independent.co.uk)
In March 2023, a recruiter for Arthur Grand Technologies posted a job advertisement looking for ‘US Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates]’...
USA Unprepared for H5N1 Pandemic (www.newsweek.com)
In short we’ve learned nothing, done nothing, and will be caught flat again. If you’re not ready, get ready, because no one is coming to save you.
New Doomsday Clock just dropped (lemmy.world)
Just catching up now, but apparently Skibidi Toilet is the source material for most of Generation A's cultural milieu. (youtu.be)
Anybody got any thoughts? I’m planning a watch of the entire series and a deep dive into the offshoots....
Freud (mander.xyz)
There was very little wind in the 80s/90s as a result (lemmy.world)
No elaboration needed (lemmy.world)
It's terrifying... (lemmy.world)
We're studying the wrong monkeys. (lemmy.world)
Yes, I know chimps aren’t monkeys. I didn’t make this.
When I grow up, I'm going to be an astronaut (mander.xyz)
They almost convinced me with this one (lemmy.world)
What doesn't kill you… (sopuli.xyz)
Memes live in your brain (youtu.be)
A video titled “This Video Will Make You Angry”, by CGP Grey, about how memes evolve in the same manner as living organisms, though in this case those most successful tend to be the ones that engender anger in their target audience.
Shining in the Darkness
Recently I have been thinking about Shining in the Darkness....