Saidit is its own worst enemy - a combination of mean and stupid - which keeps Saidit very small and ultra right-wing

submitted by bootylicious from self.SaidIt

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]magnora7 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (30 children)

I agree this is a problem, and why a forum that has no votes but still uses the reddit format may be a new thing to try on the next forum.

The fake upvoting problem is an issue, and the real deal is these people have infinite IP addresses and can spoof their browser credentials. I've made scripts that detect activity like logging in and out to too many accounts too quickly, but even these rules can only block a certain IP. And if they have a completely different IP address every single time they make a page request, then there is literally no way to block them.

We at least have it fixed so when a user is banned from saidit, their votes go away as well, which helps remove the effects of vote manipulation. But the reality is, they just keep creating accounts with unique credentials each time, and so I have no way to differentiate those accounts from the accounts of regular users other than the behavior of the account... I have done some work developing algorithms good at detecting accounts that vote too quickly all together on a the same post or comment, and then autobanning all those accounts. But the result is they just make 10 more new accounts every time. This has been going on for years and I'm honestly not sure how to better engage it than we already are. I am open to suggestions, but also the amount of programming work necessary to get marginal improvements on this issue is rather steep.

We also built the block buttons, so posts by known troublemakers can be blocked by the users. We've really given the issue a fair shot many times over, but the real problem is that the vote system will exist to gamed in the first place. Another idea I had is to make a forum that limits the number of IP addresses a user can have, using the fact that the browser credentials and IP are randomized every time as a giveaway to shill activity. The problem is many VPNs mimic this behavior as well so it's again tough to differentiate between shills and normal users. Which is of course what they are trying to do, to pretend to be normal users while hijacking the information stream.

I think the real answer is a no-vote forum, where the threads are sorted by who left the last comment, old school style. But even this can be hijacked with enough volume. I really hate to say it but the text-based forum is in trouble because I have been thinking seriously for 5 years about this issue and I don't have a better solution than what we currently have. So many forums have failed because of it. Any better solution requires a team of people working 24/7 to monitor each post and comment individually as it arises, which is a ridiculous amount of work that requires a ridiculous amount of money. We have 10 volunteer content admins which helps but it only goes so far.

Anyway, if people have ideas, I'm listening.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Just spitballing, but what about allowing everyone to see who votes for a thing, suspicious accounts can be reported to admins. I am pretty sure the vote manipulation is still ongoing.

[–]Vulptex 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That could be a privacy issue. To be honest I'm even skeptical of letting admins see that information, and imo there's absolutely no reason they need to be able to see what someone saved. And preferrably deleted content is either wiped off the server completely or only visible to the author.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not a huge fan of people seeing what I upvote or don't. That causes hurt feelings too, if someone didn't upvote their forum buddy or whatever. I don't know another way to do it though. I'm just looking through all the stuff now that got absolutely ignored because of this nonsense hogging up the front page.

I can't believe he's fucking with Saidit. For a lot of us this is the only place we can speak our minds without catching a ban. He has the entire fucking internet that caters to his ideology, why's he got to mess with what little we have?

And even worse, he thinks he's doing a good thing and we're all evil right wing fascists. This Noble Lie bullshit is horrible, because the people lying aren't noble at all.

[–]HibikiBlack 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

That's fine dude. I'm just thinking about creating larger mod teams so you don't have to deal with the whole mess alone. Have people interact and keep an eye on bad faith users, and be more active when it comes to upvoting the good stuff. That way the community can regulate itself. We have defeated socks/Phoenix in this fashion already and I'm sure we'll do it again.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

Thanks. I think we are doing alright overall too but there's always room for improvement. Having 10 content admins like saidit does is helpful. The real danger to having too many content admins is that one of the shills infiltrates an admin position. I think we've avoided this so far, but it's tough.

[–]HibikiBlack 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

If you see giving room to content admins as dangerous, well It's just a matter of trying to create communities so that everyone can contribute to detecting and punishing shills.

Take some advice and don't do the same thing I did by trying to solve everything alone.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

well It's just a matter of trying to create communities so that everyone can contribute to detecting and punishing shills.

That's called reddit votes, and it's already proven that system is far too easy to hijack.

The fact I already took on 10 content admins shows I'm not trying to do it alone.

[–]HibikiBlack 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

That's fine just remember we have your back too.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks, I appreciate you all that help saidit be the best it can be

[–]HibikiBlack 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Look at me promoting Saidit in the comment section:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/wrrblb/the_wef_is_losing_the_online_information_battle/iku6vvi/?context=3

I'm more hyped than ever dude so you keep yourself strong too. That goes to our brother d3rr as well.

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

I do see you telling people about saidit and it's awesome to have your help. Saidit has definitely grown because of your continued work, and the work of many others who share links and tell others about saidit.

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

Neither mods or other admins are able to deal with something like this. Admins are not able to access the server console and execute whatever code they want, only magnora can do that. Additionally, reddit's admin frontend was never open sourced, so afaik we can't see IP or other identifying info, and viewing someone's votes isn't as simple as it is on reddit.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

Hypocrite. Full of the same shit for years. You refuse to give up any power, even a little to open up the system - meanwhile you'll always have ultimate power and keys to the kingdom. You've lost your credibility, time, and the quality of SaidIt by insisting everything be done your myopic way instead of opening up everything. You don't just need your team. You need a trusted-team AND an inspired community plus ongoing open communications using an open management system. This is not new, but you won't even consider it. And morale is for shit, thanks to lost potential and opportunities. SaidIt could have been so much more. YOU fucked up.

The block button increases forum slide and further removes the user from any responsibilities or care about the site at large. It was always a shitty unfinished tool.

More heads are better than one dictator head.

Even if you take another 5 years your brain can never solve this alone.

Restore order by putting power in the people's hands.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

You need a trusted-team AND an inspired community plus ongoing open communications using an open management system. This is not new, but you won't even consider it.

You mean like the admin team of 10 people and all the subreddit moderators and the voting system that we've been doing for a long time now? Your anger isn't helping, and your ideas aren't novel because we've already implemented them.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Firstly, general name-calling has gotten way out of control, especially in chat, and is IMO the primary catalyst for all this forum sliding and uncivil culture.

You mean like the admin team of 10 people and all the subreddit moderators and the voting system that we've been doing for a long time now?

Give me a break. I very well recall your new arbitrary top-down decree, as usual, without consulting the community until it was demanded amid ongoing problems, and then poorly done. From with your new take on the old rules, SaidIt's been MUCH shittier since, sliding towards Voat, Poal, and Ruqqus culture. Regardless and critically important: it is still NOT a bottom-up open system. FOTPACH (fair, open, transparent, peaceful, accountable, consistent, honest) was invented for YOU because you could not manage well nor ethically.

Most importantly, you've completely failed to have consistent communications with your community on how things are managed, much less anything else (goals, promotion, support, growth, etc.). I've said for years that SaidIt needs a newsletter, regular developments (besides the Canary), some special announcement links (ie. sidebox under the broken search), regular PSAs (public service announcements), noob tutorials, advanced guides, better FAQ content, etc.

I've not been very active lately, however I've not been so out of the loop to miss too much - such as admin announcements.

Your anger isn't helping, and your ideas aren't novel because we've already implemented them.

What isn't helping is your lack of leadership skills and refusal to open things up transparently and fairly. You may have PARTIALLY implemented some of my ideas, and others', but that doesn't mean they're actually functional, much less optimal, or even effective when they are utterly incomplete and still top-down.

Further, this is the first time you've bothered to acknowledge anything I've shared in many months - maybe even a year. You either unblocked me or decided to not ignore me and finally engaged. Regardless, you may continue to flounder further hiding behind backhanded bullshittery, or can employ our community's collective assistance by actually listening instead of insulting folks.

Playing it "safe" means you're incapable or afraid of experimenting and trying new things to improve SaidIt. Stop worrying about "what if" and take action. If it fails then undo it. If it succeeds move on to the next improvement strategy. Your "leadership" efforts thus far don't indicate any legitimate worry about SaidIt's numbers anyway.

[–]HibikiBlack 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Magnora may have his flaws but he is no tyrant. He is still offering to listen to options, It's just that he seems to has trust issues about the people who handle content on the site. The community by itself can already do a lot of the things you say, I myself wish I could get more involved in such things but the posting and fighting by itself already drains me.

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

I didn't call him a tyrant.

He hasn't listened to many folks in years.

He has issues that aren't limited to trust.

But so do we all.

Yes, the community can do much, but it's either limited, unguided, or needs the extra validation of the ultimate authority: admins. Otherwise it's just gangs with empty threats, limited to harassment at worst or forum shaming at best. /s/SaidItCommunity was started to develop new ideas and more, but I've since been preoccupied with other priorities.

Ask yourself, how much more important are your posts (that revisit old news) than investing in and developing our online communities?

magnora7's centralized top-down management style holds SaidIt back more than he can possibly realize and everyone else just talks and talks with few who are able bothering to do anything to improve anything - so I've given up trying with SaidIt folks. That's why I was going to start some Lemmy instances, but now I really don't care about them much either. SaidIt users suck, expecting free shit, giving nothing, complaining that I'm asking for "free" help (when I pay). Local communities have their own set of pros and cons, but at least we're taking action, getting results, experience, and positive results. So my focus starts local first now, bottom-up, then expands outward - like my first sub /s/DecentralizeAllThings.

[–]HibikiBlack 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Well, I can't consider myself to be religious by most standards. Religion tends to be dogmatic and I can't say I always follow certain principles. But a lot of the traumas in my life have let me to believe that there is a certain sacred aspect towards ethics themselves.

/u/magnora7 You should listen to this too. One of the things that let me to the information war was, well, I've always been paranoid towards technology and the way people slowly became more and more hyper-connected to each other with everyday that went by, and I began to wonder, what if someone, the government or whatever, started using technology for evil? As I navigated the Internet in a naive fashion and became familiar with the way Post-Modernism screwed up the level of discouse, it let me to have a huge mental breakdown and I got involved with the far-right groups. (I learned the things I know about the Holocaust from them)

Now the most obvious thing to do from the ethical point of view when it comes to leadership, would be, well think of a plan of taking down the bad guys. I've always thought about doing something like embracing rebellion, but I've never had quite the motivation to go all out in such a fashion until I found out about the Vatican being behind the destruction of my hometown. (Which by the way, sorry again for my behaviour back then but It's like another personality was created in me that I couldn't control and was in a frenzied state for months)

Either way, outside of Saidit itself, I've thought of ways of exposing people to my ideas and theories and people actually love my content in mass. I always promote Saidit while I do this at the same time and yet despite people loving my ideas in mass, the hard truth is that most people are too apathetic and cynical like to believe they can even make a difference at all and give up without even trying.

Now It's not like the censorship is there and people are confused, they are exposed to and legit like my stuff, but are beaten by their own defeatism regardless... And that right there is enough to drive anyone into depression.

But despite all this, there's something deep inside that tells me that there is a lot of value in what I do and that I was always supposed to do this. And that there's meaning in the things I've done and the people that I've touched along the way. That's why I keep up with my work over here despite everything that happens. It seems that the larger my collections grows, the more determined and frustrated the shills get in taking me down but I also keep getting better too. It's crazy how much we've exchanged blows with each other at this point.

Either way I'm just trying to narrate what has motivated me as time has gone by. I hope it gives you an insight about what to do from now on. I would appreciate for you to stay around a little longer until I can share a large part of my records with you guys.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I would appreciate for you to stay around a little longer until I can share a large part of my records with you guys.

Post less, organize more, until it's all done, then resume as you were or evolve with new habits. Your records would be better if people could search through them with or without context (on WikiSpooks, InfoGalactic, Projex.Wiki, torrent, IPFS, TOR, etc) on their own time with their own agendas, rather than have them wait for you to repost.

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

This is the one type of case where shadowbans might be a good course of action. But iirc you might have to tweak a few things to get their votes to not count, I think that was broken in reddit's final open source version.

The only other thing I can think of is removing voting rules altogether, then the most determined party wins.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Shadowbans only slow down their process slightly, because of reddit they know all they have to do is logout or look with a private browser mode to see if they're banned or not. It's 10s of hours of programming for me, to result in a few minutes of annoyance for them. Not worth it, unfortunately. Furthermore I have a moral issue with shadowbanning in general, I think it's a form of gaslighting for the real people who get caught up in it.

The only other thing I can think of is removing voting rules altogether, then the most determined party wins.

Yeah that's kind of where I'm at with it too. The thing is, they're always the most determined party, because they're being paid to do so. They will always have the most time and energy to devote to manipulating the forum. This somehow has to be taken in to account when designing a new forum. There needs to be a way to disempower the busybodies and empower the people who post infrequently. Which is the opposite of how it works now. But at the core, if they can create infinite anonymous user accounts, then we have no real defense. So I think something like limiting the number of IP addresses per user might be the way to go.

Or another user suggested that maybe new users could be restricted to a certain sub, and then get community approval before they can post to the rest of the site. But the downside with this, is that the moment this approval system gets hijacked by some shills, they'll approve a thousand more shill accounts, then the whole system is shot again.

Another idea is to make people pay $5 to register an account, with no refunds if they get banned. This would make shilling extremely expensive. But it would also certainly deter real users, and it would be awful for anonymous truth telling because it ties back to a cash account, which is kind of against the whole point of this site.

It's a real pickle.

[–]Vulptex 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

I've dealt with this on reddit before, you'd be surprised how many of them don't check for shadowbans. Just make 100% sure they're not real users before you do it, and remember, mods can still approve their posts if it was a mistake.

You shouldn't need to program it yourself, the functionality comes with reddit. If you set a user's _spam flag, they will be shadowbanned. I think you'll have to fix the votes, but that's it unless saidit's changes broke something else too. Alternatively you could make one that only shadowbans votes.

There's also is_suspended but you already have a replacement for that, and _banned which I would never use if possible, that's the one that logs the user out of their account and blocks their password. For shadowbans there's also a flag that keeps their profile page visible.

A script could auto-ban accounts from a certain IP, but it sounds like that's not going to work here, and it's not really the greatest thing to go by anyway. A cookie might work for some cases, but probably not this one.

In the case of real users I think an automated message explaining their ban would be a good idea, I got it working without much trouble.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Actually I don't think we inherited any of that functionality unfortunately. They stripped out all the admin controls from the open source. D3rr had to make a new ban system from scratch basically when we first started. Unless you're talking about some mod-level functionality I'm unaware of, I don't think we have it.

I would be down with an automated message to the person banned. But on the other hand maybe it's good sometimes if they don't know they're banned, similar to shadowbanning. Saidit currently doesn't explicitly say "you're banned", I believe it just returns errors when the banned user tries to post or comment something. Which I think is a reasonable system.

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

Oh shit! There was no need to make a whole new ban system. They only stripped out the frontend. The functionality is still there, you just have to make a button to enable it (or don't, it may be a good idea for only you to be able to perform shadowbans). I know these things because I've tested it out myself. If you look through the source code you can see the _spam and is_suspended attributes, and they do work. u/d3rr I feel bad for you now.

Make a test account and use the console to set its _spam attribute, then post stuff with it and play around with mod tools (spoiler: most of them don't work), then try is_suspended and maybe _banned.

I have tested the global ban on saidit and it does not send a message, but it does remove the post and comment buttons like a subreddit ban. I think it would be helpful for real users to know why they were banned.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm sure d3rr just built a new frontend if that's all that was necessary. I didn't work on this portion of it so I don't know the details, only d3rr does, but he deleted his saidit account so tagging him is especially pointless.

If you can figure out how to code the sending of an automated message upon banning that might be good, but I still think that maybe the extra of delay of shills and bots having to figure out they are banned might be worth it, especially if you were previously suggesting shadowbanning...

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

It's a completely different backend. u/d3rr was apparently unaware that the backend for admin tools was included, so he rolled his own quick one. But if you need someone shadowbanned, use the console to set their _spam flag. Since they're separate functions a message would not be sent for shadowbans, but would for normal bans (or suspensions, if you want to switch to that). Iirc you have to program the system account to send a PM automatically when a ban or suspension is fired.

I do think suspensions might work as a replacement for users who became unbannable after the 500 error happened when attempting to global ban them, which seems to be getting more common.

If I have time I can make some changes myself and test them, assuming the github is up to date. I could add a frontend for shadowbans and suspensions. I'm guessing the reddit admins have a completely separate program from reddit that they use to take these actions.

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

Actually it's in_timeout, not is_suspended. That might be ruqqus.

Anyway you can see the in_timeout property here: https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit/blob/master/r2/r2/models/account.py

The _spam attribute comes from a superclass and is the same as what's used for sub bans, and I think posts and comments and messages too.

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

u/d3rr

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

u/d3rr I saw this line:

# TODO: refactor to self._spam
if self.is_global_banned:

Accounts already have a _spam property, it's inherited, I think from thing, along with _deleted. Enabling it causes the user to be shadowbanned.

The code for "chucking" an account (password lockout) with the _banned property starts on line 556.

In listingcontroller.py, at line 952, you can see where the profile pages are blocked for _spam, _deleted, and in_timeout. Here's the shadowban one:

# hide spammers profile pages
if vuser._spam and not vuser.banned_profile_visible:
    if (not c.user_is_loggedin or
            not (c.user._id == vuser._id or
                 c.user_is_admin or
                 c.user_is_sponsor and where == "promoted")):
        return self.abort404()

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

Money is only one way for people to take a stake in their online community.

Give them a say with authentic direct democracy, among other bottom-up concepts, and actually let their voices be heard, recognized (without insults), and seen in obvious results and actions.

Yes, invested people will actually care, but it's not all about money.