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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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So there was just a burst of 11 upvotes for this story in 10 minutes, while during the same time period there were 3 downvotes.
I wonder if the same ratio will continue during the next 10-minute window or going forward; my bet is that the ratio will more or less reverse (or more), with downvotes dominating over time. What would cause an unusual number of people to all upvote this story all at once, right after it was posted?
Maybe I am wrong. Let's see.
Edit: I am wrong, I think. Beyond that fact that this post obviously isn't being downvoted heavily now that it's established, I spent a while looking at this question, and I found some things that maybe looked hinky, but nothing outwardly and obviously suspicious. And you can't really tell anything from the behavior right after a post -- it's all noise. After about 30-60 minutes, enough votes have been accumulated that you can say something about it, but before then, all bets are off.
That's probably just an ideological breakdown of the 15 people that browse New on Lemmy.
Honestly, just get yourself an account that allows you to see who votes and vote order, it will save you a lot of paranoia.
3 of the first 11 upvotes are people I recognise and have interacted with. It's obviously not sockpuppets.
If the downvotes I can see, two of the first 3 are people I've recently interacted with as well.
I'm a non-US fediversian and I upvoted it because I thought the headline was funny and because I sympathise with Americans for having to choose between these two old men (who aren't even Bernie Sanders, which would have been more understandable).
An admin account?
Just any kbin account will do it. The info is there in ActivityPub so sooner or later there will be a client that includes it, if there isn't yet.
(My main's at kbin.social but we are temporarily on read-only here at lemmy.world due to our servers going haywire, so to comment here I have to use my lemmy account).
Any good kbin/mbin apps yet?
Don't think so, kbin's not stable yet.
I'm a bit out of the loop though because I prefer mobile interface.
I'm too happy with Sync to switch anyway.
Yes, lemmy downvotes are a conspiracy to make Biden look bad.
It is well documented that many political-influence organizations have extensive social-media-fakery arms, and I'm absolutely certain that most of them have as their #1 priority from now until November to get Trump elected. And Trump is clearly a pile of elephant shit in human skin, so going after Biden for a variety of random bullshit (or just talking down the whole concept of democracy in general) is their best angle of attack.
It's not self-evident that they've discovered Lemmy, but I feel confident at this point that they have. And if they have, it would be weird if they decided on posting only, that voting was a red line they didn't want to cross.
Yes, how else can you explain the unpopularity of two pro-genocide candidates? Must be a conspiracy! Everyone loves Biden!
Biden being unpopular here would make sense. I think it's safe to say that this is a leftist community and the Democrats aren't all that left; I don't know anyone on the American left who's really happy about anyone in politics (except maybe for Bernie Sanders) even when they're not giving aid to someone who's actively starving and shelling children.
I say I'm confident that there's a big shilling operation on Lemmy because the behavior of the accounts doesn't make sense. They don't want to talk about Ranked Choice Voting. They don't want to talk about going to the Palestine protest. They don't want to talk about Ralph Nader or the Green Party, except every so often as a little aside about how voting is a waste of time but it you do then at least vote IDK whatever Green Party or something.
It's like if in 2016, instead of /r/sandersforpresident, there was /r/hondurashillary and they spent all their energy shitting on Hillary (for extremely valid reasons they would have had), and saying they weren't planning on voting at all because all the Democrats Bernie Sanders included were just bad, as a rule, because they're Democrats. I've straight-up asked some of these people, what do you think about this or that leftist issue, what can I do to help make the voting system better, and no one has an answer. The reasons not to vote for Biden are super passionate and super polished. The reasons to do anything else? Who cares. I don't know. Let's get back to what's really important: Not voting for Biden. That's what I'm here to talk about today. And, they seem genuinely not to give a shit if people don't like them -- like OP posting come rain or come shine several comically transparent anti-Biden stories, every single day, like it's... well, like it's his job.
Also, they slip sometimes. They say "Democrat Party." They make little fumbles about American history that I don't think would come from a native American. They have odd little mannerisms that you can notice if you watch them closely. IDK, maybe that gets into tinfoil hat territory, but I will say for myself that there are a bunch of particular accounts that I'm extremely convinced are part of an organized effort to influence the discourse.
You have an overinflated sense of the importance of lemmy.
Because it's a fucking pipe dream that does nothing about the current election, which is the subject at hand.
Yes, no one wants to talk about someone whose political relevance ended in 2000. It must be a massive international conspiracy.
Because thy know it's not getting better, and Democrats are taking advantage of a broken system. Bein' like "what are you gonna do about the problem we created and perpetuate?" is just gloating.
"I can't rebut my opponent's arguments" is not evidence of a conspiracy.
Is OP doing that? Am I?
One guy posts poll results you don't like. Must be a paid shill.
Yes, I'd say it does. Disagreeing with you is not evidence of some massive conspiracy to influence the election through a fledgling platform full of stubborn centrists.
It's an interesting fucking article. Just because it isn't pro-Biden doesn't mean it isn't news.
It very likely could be socket puppet accounts, but also there's occasionally a lag in federation of posts and votes. So the post could have showed up on some voter suppressionist server, the users all upvoted it, and then the votes were federated all at once.
2 hours later...
What are your thoughts now?
I actually spent quite a while looking at it. Honestly, I found some things that I found a little suspicious, but nothing really all that compelling. I decided I was chasing ghosts and abandoned the analysis.
Since you asked, though, here's what the ratio for this post looks like over time:
So, pretty much, exactly ordinary and as you'd expect it.
I mentioned some things I found a little suspicious -- as an example, here's the graph for this post which I also would have predicted to be a magnet for fake voting:
That one, to me, looks hinky. The slow dropoff after an initially elevated ratio looks like exactly what I'd expect if there was an organized effort right at the beginning to drop a bunch of fake upvotes. But... there could be a bunch of alternate explanations. It's actually pretty difficult to get a prediction of what a "typical" post should look like, because there are a lot of variables and not a lot of data points (there aren't that many posts that display the right combination of "controversial post" + "enough votes in total to get above the noise.")
Like I say, I gave up the idea concluding that, on the balance, there's at least not a strong indication that anyone is dropping fake votes in big batches.
I've been doing this for years and learned on Reddit what headlines get the most interactions. I've talked to you before about my Reddit account that I left during the API shutdown.
You can go look at my posts there too for more interaction data: https://www.reddit.com/u/return2ozma
You posted "Go vote Long Beach!" on the Long Beach reddit community around primary time, with a link to where people can find their voting place, but not anything like that on Lemmy (e.g. !longbeach@lemmy.world community)? Is that right?
I haven't really interacted with my Lemmy sub in a minute. Recently posted a few things.
But you posted "Go vote Long Beach!" on Reddit, though?
Do you need me to post on Reddit? Do you not believe it's me?
I mean, I definitely suspect it of not being you. It hadn't even occurred to me until you told me tonight to look at your Reddit account, but yes, when I looked at it and !longbeach@lemmy.world, the voting post among some other things seemed a tiny bit off.
Are you offering to post on Reddit to demonstrate that, weird voting post notwithstanding, it really is you on both accounts? It honestly doesn't seem super impactful either way, I just thought it was weird.
There's only like 95 subscribers to the sub on Lemmy compared to 152k subscribers on Reddit. I thought it would be more impactful on Reddit.
Anyways, check the bio update...
https://www.reddit.com/user/return2ozma/
Hey! I see, that is wonderful. And makes sense; maybe I am excessively suspicious.
Tin foil hat! Oh no!
Maybe those 62% agree with the article?