this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Can users from my instance still downvote with the API on other federated instances if I turn off downvotes on my instance? (vegantheoryclub.org)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by vtctechadmin@vegantheoryclub.org to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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I want to make signing up to my instance as unattractive to bots and vote manipulation as possible. If I could turn off all voting on Lemmy I absolutely would. I think activitypub votes are spam and just because reddit used them doesn't mean that it should be required. I used forums and other websites for a long time before Reddit even existed without voting and my time with Reddit and now Lemmy has left me unconvinced that it is worth while. I think engagement with comments is the only thing worth anything on this platform and some day I'd like to see a sorting algorithm that only took traffic and comments into account for scoring.

Anyway, I try my best to review the users who sign up and the comments that are made to my instance. I typically deny new applicants with disposable email addresses as well.

But there are some accounts that were created that have no activity that I can see easily from lemmy-ui and I'm not really at the point where I am reviewing SQL database. I want to confirm disabling downvotes at least prevented that kind of bot activity and I was wondering if there is anything else I can be doing? I can see how upvoting fascist and western centric points of view can also be problematic by boosting a state actor's propaganda in a mirror of downvotes silencing minority views.

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[–] minnix@lemux.minnix.dev 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yes they can. The vote will not show up logged in from your instance but it will show up on the instance the user votes from.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 2 points 5 months ago

That's the user downvoting the copy of the post on their own instance. If OP doesn't have downvotes then those votes won't federate.

[–] Alliegaytor@vegantheoryclub.org 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I tested it using the api on this instance /api/v3/post/like and I was unable to downvote any post. I also tried /api/v3/comment/like and it would also fail due to {"error":"downvotes_are_disabled"}⏎ .

I made sure to try and downvote a comment/post on an instance with downvotes enabled.

Not sure why people are saying you can, unless I've completely screwed this up, but it seems that downvotes don't work at all via the api if it's disabled.

curl

curl --request POST \
     --url https://vegantheoryclub.org/api/v3/post/like \
     --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (X12; Linux x86_128) Gecko/19840101 0.821/xoferiF" \
     --header 'authorization: Bearer REDACTED ' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "score": -1,
  "post_id": 362154
}
'

[–] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

they can downvote if their instance is federated with yours, the downvotes won't federate though and will only be seen by users on the same instance.

look at some hexbear posts from lemmy.ml and lemm.ee for instance.

Woops read this the wrong way around. No they can't at least not with the UI. Look at any lemm.ml or lemm.ee post from hexbear.

[–] Markaos@lemmy.one 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Not familiar with the API, and I'm not entirely sure if it's not just a bug in Eternity (fork of Infinity), but lemmy.one doesn't have downvotes and I don't get the option to downvote anywhere.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 5 months ago

I would be careful about lemmy.one

The admin has been missing for some time, a few people posted to the meta community and never got any answer

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Downvote are an important method for controlling misinformation. We do need better info in side bars informing users what the button is for and what it is not for

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah I think of downvotes as like micro-moderation, or crowd sourced curation. It's generally a good feature. They can be annoying sometimes but it's better than the alternative of bad/spam posts/comments flooding your feed.

[–] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cool post.