Hello, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but is anyone else being massively downvoted on every comment? I noticed this started happening after the DDOS attacks on lemmy.world. If you check my profile, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Almost as soon as I post a comment it’s at -10, etc.

Have I pissed off someone, or is it a possible bot attack? I try to keep most of my comments cordial, which is why this is confusing me. Thanks.

  • freamon@endlesstalk.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Activity on your account certainly seems unusual. This post is getting 1 downvote a minute when I’m reading it, which is more engagement than usually happens on Lemmy, good or bad.

    • artifice@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      35·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s extremely strange. Seems like I’m being targeted by bots. Useless internet points and all, but it’s a bit alarming that I’ve been singled out this way.

      • freamon@endlesstalk.orgEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        It might just be that your username is alphabetically near the start of the most popular instance.

  • PriorProject@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 year ago

    This looks weird to me.

    • Kbin downvotes are public, you can see who made them at https://kbin.social/u/@[email protected]. Kbin doesn’t federate downvotes from Lemmy though, so you can only see downvotes made there. I stalked your profile a bit on kbin and there was nothing weird. Mostly no downvotes, and in the few cases there were some there was no correlation of people across threads. The worst I saw was like three people downvoting a series of comments in a single thread, which is not weird or stalky.
    • Downvotes are also not anonymous to Lemmy instance admins. They are recorded in Lemmy’s DB with a link to who made them. This isn’t exposed via the web-ui or app-api, so regular users cannot see them… but admins (and users with their own Lemmy instance) can.

    I would consider reporting this to info@mastodon.world. If someone is actually sockpuppeting 10-20 accounts and profile stalking, that sounds to me like bannable abuse and something the admins might be interested in looking into. Now, of course, if you’re the one who has been harassing people in old comments, moderated comments, deleted comments, or DMs… admins might decide to ban you all. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and often result in two bans. It’s also possible that admins have bigger fish to fry and won’t have time to investigate… but if I were admin I’d be interested in early instances of mass-sockpuppeting so I could think about ways to detect and react to it.

    Edit: As an aside, the animated profile icon is pretty annoying and it may be that people downvote just for that.

    • artifice@lemmy.worldOP
      11·
      1 year ago

      Haha, definitely haven’t harassed anyone. Didn’t even know the animated icon worked tbh, am on mobile, it’s just a static picture for me. Thanks for the tips! I’ll contact the admins/mods, maybe I can be their test dummy.

      • Rooki@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        Probably because of your profile banner as it could kill/harm people with epilepsy. And for that i downvote someone tbh. As a “warning” for those in need.

        • artifice@lemmy.worldOP
          17·
          1 year ago

          I agree, I will change it as soon as I’m able. Never thought of it that way honestly. I’m curious to see if the admins can tell who, or what exactly, is behind this.

      • SpringMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I believe @rooki has a solid point. Your banner, and icon to a lesser extent, really hurt the eyes and if someone was epileptic it could be an issue. Not to say they aren’t neat but I could see someone getting up in arms over it.

    • artifice@lemmy.worldOP
      13·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I’ve been in contact with a couple others stating the exact same thing. This is very interesting, I hope the admins will get back to me soon.

      • Historical_General@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        I have a similar problem, idiots who have a political disagreement with me have downvoted my posts, by 4 points on a few comments and up to 40 on a post - which is bad since that potentially degrades an entire community’s experience.

        Who should I contact for help/info btw?

        • artifice@lemmy.worldOP
          01·
          1 year ago

          I’m not sure anyone can help you there honestly. If you’re being downvoted do to a disagreement, then that’s what the voting system is for. What’s happening to me and others is mass, targeted, downvoting. Either using a script/bots, or multiple sock puppet accounts.

  • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
    0·
    1 year ago

    Fortunately accounts are free and the points meaningless.

    But, you could find out. Abandon this account for a time and come back. If the insta-downvotes start again then you know it’s bots, if not then you get to laugh at the someone or someones that wasted all that time… Well they still wasted their time even to set up bots but you know what I mean.

    You could also ignore or migrate. I don’t think Lemmy is equipped to tackle this kind of trolling, except that accounts are free and the points meaningless. To me that’s solution enough, YMMV on how attached you get to your account though.

      • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
        1·
        1 year ago

        It makes it impossible to quickly assess whether a how-to video is legitimate or full of misinformation and mistakes.

        I guess if someone is operating under the premise “what is popular is correct” they would find value in votecounts. I dunno, I might browse weird though; I dont read community names, usernames or look at vote count.

        I always saw votes as being for the entity (YouTube, Reddit etc) so they can serve up what’s popular to users so they’re more attractive to users.

        Again, lemmy is rarely active enough for comments to be banished and all of which is ignoring the fact that the numbers are meaningless just migrate.

          • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
            0·
            1 year ago

            All roads lead to the same end though: migrate. If you care about your comment numbers migrate and the downvotes stop. Account numbers don’t grant you any special treatment so migrate because you don’t lose anything. Accounts are free and your score means nothing, just migrate.

            This very much seems an argument for arguments’ sake.

    • artifice@lemmy.worldOP
      12·
      1 year ago

      I appreciate the advice. I’ll just create a new account. I found a tool that will migrate my community/block lists, so it’ll be effortless. It is pretty funny and pathetic if you think about what’s happening with my account here. Honestly I feel weirdly honored that someone actually wasted their life on this lol.