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

submitted by magnora7[A] from self.SaidIt

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[–]magnora7[S] 165 insightful - 12 fun165 insightful - 11 fun166 insightful - 12 fun -  (2 children)

Also we're not only being technologically attacked, but culturally attacked as well. Please read this post from /u/Extract and be aware of the full situation regarding these attacks on saidit:

What if I told you, that the last refugee wave was large enough for some propaganda organizations to put this site on their radar?

What if I told you the concern trolls posting those threads/comments are the first wave of shills, whose goal is to slowly corrupt this site the same way most platforms (like many subreddits, in their time) get corrupted? Notice how most of those concern trolls highlight problems that could actually be solved by their own participation - but, that would actually help the site, while their goal is clearly to (slowly) undermine it.

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.

I think some things on the top of the front page these last few days reflect this type of cultural attack, and I think the users of saidit need to be aware that this activity is happening. This is why voat and so many other alternatives have problems with their culture being hijacked by dedicated extremists. It's a deliberate tactic to poison the well, to lower the signal-to-noise ratio and drive others away. People need to be aware that this is a real problem.

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

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.

[–]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.