Random string, yeah, like https://piefed.social/u/WYJH5o7OGkbgtxA
Comment on Private voting has been added to PieFed
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Regarding the voting account having no name, does that mean it will be a random string of letters and numbers? I get that it will still be possible to discover vote manipulation or mass downvoting with that, but I suspect it would be more difficult to detect initially or without some deeper analysis, since it’s difficult to recognize or remember a random string compared to a human made username.
andrew_s@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Ah, that’s unfortunate. As an alternative, I have seen some online games name their bots with a random name generator that’s designed to sound somewhat real, like AnnoyingPidgen or WrecklessRaptor. If the voting account naming system was more like that, it would be easier to notice voting patterns/manipulation while still being anonymous.
chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net 4 weeks ago
I’ve seen posts being downvoted by user@instancea, user@instanceb, username@instancec etc. this will make tracking that kind of abuse much more difficult.
TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
From reading about PieFed’s moderation tools linked elsewhere in this thread, seems like the solution to that is already built in more explicitly for them.
chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net 4 weeks ago
Can you elaborate further? If the intention is to obscure the information by federating anonymous information outwards, then no third party instance owners can observe the true usernames for vote manipulation from the same user across instances. If more instances deploy this kind of poisonous behaviour across the fediverse, then it becomes untenable for instance owners and community moderator to protect themselves, which in turn hurts the fediverse as a whole.