Saidit is currently undergoing the largest DDOS attack we've ever had

submitted by magnora7[A] from self.SaidIt

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[–][deleted] 27 insightful - 2 fun27 insightful - 1 fun28 insightful - 2 fun -  (27 children)

They will also cite the new influx of users as a good thing, and threaten it ends if $demandList isn't met, while in reality much of this activity is artificially created by those shills (not most votes, just the early spike that makes it visible enough for other people to upvote it for the sake of discussion).

This isn't going to stop, by the way - this is only going to get worse the more popular this site gets bigger.

Ironically, giving everyone freedom also gives intelligence agencies and large organizations the opportunity to be deliberately malicious. What can you even do about it? There are no simple answers.

[–]magnora7[S] 27 insightful - 4 fun27 insightful - 3 fun28 insightful - 4 fun -  (24 children)

What can you even do about it?

I think this is the biggest question on the internet right now. No one has solved it, and I'm not sure it's solvable either. But it's clear some approaches are better than others, and I'd like to think saidit's design will help us weather these types of attacks

[–][deleted] 35 insightful - 4 fun35 insightful - 3 fun36 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

Saidit is definitely a step in the right direction. It takes the best aspects of what came before and attempts to improve. The work you do here is admirable for sure.

[–]magnora7[S] 24 insightful - 6 fun24 insightful - 5 fun25 insightful - 6 fun -  (2 children)

Thank you.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]FormosaOolong 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    <3

    [–]bobbobbybob 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

    being able to block users (from one's personal experience) without needing to engage in pms with them first would let us create comfy silos for ourselves, whilst not changing the site for others

    [–]magnora7[S] 13 insightful - 3 fun13 insightful - 2 fun14 insightful - 3 fun -  (5 children)

    Yeah that block feature is near the top of our todo list, we also think it's a great idea, but there are programming hurdles that have to be overcome. If anyone wants to help develop such a feature, we'd definitely bring it in to the saidit site code. Here's the open source if anyone is feeling ambitious: https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit

    [–]spinell 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

    what can be done about it

    Hi! So Im a member of a huge swedish forum for free speach https://www.flashback.org/ 1.3 million users since 1997, that is often under all sorts of attacks and have to deal with lots of trolls and also authorities and attacks, leaks etc. They have a few admins and lots of mods. The way they dealt with these issues is quite authoritarian and also arbitrary but it kinda works. They made a new rule called quality before quantity. It is only the admin that can enforce, and basicly it means that the admin has the power to remove a post or ban a user completely at his own volition. Obvioulsy people complained and it is rarely used. But admin there is sort of beyond reproach, and highly trusted, and in the end he says "well if you dont like it just leave this is a private forum". Keeps a lot of bs at bay. Just throwing this out there. Good luck with everything.

    [–]magnora7[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Thanks for the info. Sounds like an ok system, but a bit arbitrary and up to whims perhaps. I imagine it being in Swedish helps, as there's more shills and propaganda in English I would think. I am envious of that aspect

    [–]raslyana 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Monarchy works as long as you have a good monarch. It's the succession that causes the problems.

    [–]Marsupial 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Lol Flashback is racist as fuck and is a huge echochamber where every disagreement is shouted down. It's not possible to discuss anything there that goes againt the forum circlejerk. Flashback is not what Saidit should emulate.

    [–]spinell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Excuse me?

    https://media2.giphy.com/media/d2Z32wTIuPl6iHuw/giphy.gif?cid=82a1493benekc89zebsgwf0gw2yl8vitql49vem4xiyv4hj7&rid=giphy.gif

    [–]whistlepig 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

    Personally I was a fan of the way reddit did it when that site was first created. The point of the voting was two fold. One to vote things up so people can judge what the public thinks is worth checking out, but also the ability to down vote for the opposite reason. At the time there were no moderators. The voting system allowed all individuals to adjust the voting level of comments and posts they wanted to have displayed and hidden. Sure reddit was completely loaded with the kind of comments and posts we're bitching about presently, but they always had negative votes within an hour or less so you didn't see them unless you had thick skin and voluntarily turned on the "show all" option.

    This was great for me (who has thick skin) and also for everyone else (and occasionally me when i wasn't in the mood) who didn't. Unfortunately as the site gained popularity there was an influx of people who didn't get it, the site went corporate, and being corporate they became nervous about having the ugliness on their site. And here we are.

    Maybe ruqqus or others will be able to bring that system back. Voat tried, but I think you're right. It got swamped by the manipulators before it could balance out. Clearly you have a different idea. So far it has worked well. Although I worry about it not having a method for the individual to easily hide content they don't want to see.

    [–]magnora7[S] 24 insightful - 1 fun24 insightful - 0 fun25 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

    I agree somewhat, but when reddit started the terrain was so much different though, there weren't large groups of people doing organized social attacks on the regular to try and destroy forums. That wasn't really a thing. Now it's mainstreamed and common. So the same system reddit had just doesn't work in today's climate, because too many people are too familiar with how to abuse the downvotes, and they group up to do it. And there's people who work in PR that this is literally their job, to manipulate forums to generate a false consensus to push narratives, or to destroy places of open communication by flooding them with irrational hatred. In 2005, it was just a few trolls having fun. In 2020 it's groups of hundreds of people trying to destroy your forum actively for months on end because they think it's a fun game. These different situations require different approaches to protect the people just trying to actually use the forum.

    [–]Honestanonymous 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

    Maybe u can have a shill-o-meter or troll-o-meter where people can rate shills or trolls, it doesn't do anything just adds them a tag (possible shill or troll) lolz

    [–]magnora7[S] 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

    Well the thing is... any classification system like that will be used more by the trolls than the real people so it will be gamed by the trolls to make the non-trolls look like trolls, and then they own the system and thus the website culture.

    The real problem is any voting system gets hijacked. That's why we got rid of the downvote. No votes would almost be best... or maybe it just needs to be way harder to create an account, from the moment the website starts.

    [–]Honestanonymous 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Hm damn thats tricky....I guess maybe drivers license verification would be the ultimate

    [–]thebonkest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

    I don't think there are any real technological solutions to this. What we really need are political solutions.

    The human race and the planet itself are going through some extreme labor pains right now. We can only hope it, and its child, survive -- and that that child is not a monster.

    [–]magnora7[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    I think even more deeply than political solutions, we need cultural solutions. And cultural solutions come about by one person changing the way they think, and then another, and another...

    [–]Jesus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    And that's why they use demoralization and ideological subversion directed at culture. The best method at creating an apathetic and ignorant public.

    [–]thebonkest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Which at this point legitimately might not happen. :(

    Please convince me I'm wrong.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The internet is causing a massive waking up that's equal in size to the propagandizing effect it's having, so there's reason to be hopeful.

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    I would like a list of "SHILLS" and "TROLLS" and "Delirious opinions" as well as "opposing views". By this I mean personal lists. I would love to tag somebody as SHILL and follow his posts around and verify that they are, one way or another. And "Opposing views" people for when I feel like arguing. And of course "Friends" can stay for comfy cozy sharing of info.

    Wishing is fine and dandy but it's work and you're busy, so I never talked about it before.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    It would be cool if there was a site like saidit but somehow federated on the user level, so users could decide what other users to associate or not associate with.

    [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I like this site the way it is. I want to talk to (well, almost) everybody. Some to argue with and demonstrate how they are wrong, others to agree with, and yet others to help inform me.

    [–]Jesus 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The scary thing is intelligence agencies such as DARPA can send in sophisticated bots to control public discourse. They are programmed in such a way that it is hard to detect their behaviors.

    But the more there is, the more you can see it.

    I'd imagine they will ise the insightful button and we will be seeing some highly upvoted insightful posts that are not so insightful.

    [–]Extract 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    You can do a lot of things about it.
    What you wont find is a silver bullet to solve this quickly and easily - however, here are three simple (in concept, not implementation) solutions:

    1. [Technical] Keep up to date and improve systems for user activity pattern detection (strange spikes of upvotes, upvoting threads/comments they never viewed before, etc).

    2. [Organizational] As the forum owners, keep the users aware of the shill attacks, and educated to understand how they operate.

    3. [Crowd Sourced (what you can do)] Keep other users educated about shill tactics. I have, in fact, just created the future sub where such efforts can be organized.