Why voting should not be used here at all
Why voting should not be used here at all
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/465141
Everyone I have something very important to say about The Agora.
The Problem
Let me be super clear here to something people don't seem to understand about lemmy and the fediverse. Votes mean absolutely nothing. No less than nothing.
In the fediverse, anyone can open a instance, create as many users as they want and one person can easily vote 10,000 times. I'm serious. This is not hard to do.
Voting at best is a guide to what is entertaining.
As soon as you allow a incentive the vast majority of votes will be fake. They might already be mostly fake.
If you try to make any decision using votes as a guide someone WILL manipulate votes to control YOU.
One solution (think of others too!)
A counsel of trusted users.
The admin, top mods may set up a group to decide on who to ban and what instances to defederate from. You will not get it right 100% of the time but you also won't be controlled by one guy in his basement, running 4 instances and 1,000 alts.
Now i'm gonna go back to shit posting.
Check this guy's post history, then consider his angle.
he seems to have nuked his antivax posts that I saw before. Or are there 2 people named blackconservative shitposting here?
I also like how the link to 'votes mean nothing' text is just a link to his own post.
That being said, this person isn't necessarily wrong about the proposed voting method in agora being easy to manipulate. Unless we have a specific strategy to excluding bot votes, there will be bots.
Yes my post are controversial. I don't expect to be in the trusted counsel. I don't expect to even not be banned in the coming weeks. I'm just a user here enjoying his time and don't want to see other's manipulated by what is an OBVIOUS logical flaw.
I mean, the real problem is twofold. First, that there's no reliable notifications at all. Lemmy via web, or in the apps, you don't get notifications. I've yet to get a single one about anything. This means that voting is rng.
That's amplified by the fact that the instance is open. While bots aren't going to get in, it simply doesn't matter if they're was a an attempt to limit voting to accounts on the instance because it's trivial to make one.
Now, I'm not complaining about open signup! I prefer that. But it makes it very easy to stack accounts. Not that closed signups prevent it, that just slows it.
But it makes the semblance of democracy paper thin. So, you get a handful of people able to sway decisions with little or no way to prevent it. Since anyone with sense is using VPNs to begin with, you can't even rely on ip addresses to counter the issue.
That being said, I'm still behind the experiment. It's worth trying. That's because we already have the backstop that any forum has: there's someone with veto power, should they choose to use it. The dude abides. We all have to trust the host to even be here. We therefore have to trust that he will both honor the voting, but step in when there's a problem and veto things. I do trust him for that.
What's funny is that there's zero chance I would do what he's doing. No way in hell I'm going to pay for the upkeep of an instance, put in the work for it, and not make it very clear that there's limits and that I would stomp all over dumb shit. But it is still worth trying.
Atleast you can see the problem. Most these commenters just can't seem to understand how it can easily be rigged . I don't care I can go to another instance
I think everyone should trust me to control what they see.
Joking aside, voting is the least worst form of content management. It’s gamed for sure, but so is everything else.
A council of trusted people. I've seen that somewhere else before. How were these people called..... Ah yes: Sowiet.
I don't think we should get to hung up my my proposed solution. If you don't like it it's fine to address my concerns with a better solution.
My grampa fished almost exclusively with plugs. Anyone remember how slashdot use todo mod points? You had to earn them by getting point from other users. It suck everyone left as soon as there was an other option.