Lemmy is federated, meaning independently hosted instances interact with one another. Instances often also have significant measures in place to prevent the automated creation of multiple accounts. However, anyone can host an instance. Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to host their own instance without any spam prevention measures, automatically create multiple of their own accounts, and use those accounts to flood a post with upvotes/downvotes? I’m aware that instances can block interaction from other instances, but if done correctly it would be easy to do it without raising much suspicion. Does Lemmy have any safeguards against this, and if not, is it even possible to fix?
Note: I don’t plan on doing any of this, I’m simply just curious about how it works.
I’m aware that instances can block interaction from other instances, but if done correctly it would be easy to do it without raising much suspicion.
I don’t think it would be. A sudden influx of votes from users from a new instance who never posted or commented would be pretty obvious I’d say.
Do instances automatically flag that, though? If you spread out the votes across a few days on a post that seems like it would be popular/unpopular, it doesn’t seem like anyone would look too far into it.
I don’t know if there are currently any automated systems against it, but with Lemmy votes being public, I think that someone would notice it happening sooner or later. If it became a huge problem, automated systems could certainly be developed.
