The best part of the fediverse is that anyone can run their own server. The downside of this is that anyone can easily create hordes of fake accounts, as I will now demonstrate.
Fighting fake accounts is hard and most implementations do not currently have an effective way of filtering out fake accounts. I’m sure that the developers will step in if this becomes a bigger problem. Until then, remember that votes are just a number.
People may not like it but a reputation system could solve this. Yes, it’s not the ultimate weapon and can surely be abused itself.
But it could help to prevent something like this.
How could it work? Well, each server could retain a reputation score for each user it knows. Every up- or downvote is then modified by this value.
This will not solve the issue entirely, but will make it less easy to abuse.
Ok, but what would the reputation score be based on that can’t be manipulated or faked?
Well, you see Kif, my strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it: reputation is adjusted by “votes” so that other users can up or downvote another.
Thus solving the problem, once and for all.
I’m assuming this is a joke based on the Futurama references you used, but just to be clear for everyone: this won’t work because it simply moves the problem one step further. How do you prevent bots from upvoting other bots to build a reputation?
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As mentioned: It’s not the silver bullet solution but something that raises the bar for abuse. The reputational score is build up over time on the specific server based on the up- and downvotes you received.
So, yes, this can be abused itself as well - but it requires a lot more effort.