Evidence of Brigading on v/Politics and Potential Voat Exploit (whatever)

submitted ago by fujin

I posted this on v/ProtectVoat but I wanted to post this on here to try to get maximum exposure as I think this is important for Voat's future:

I've been doing some research on the sudden rise of weak posts that do not cater to Voat's audience and would never make it to the front page.

Below I will list evidence of an on-going brigade that is being conducted to possibility test the weaknesses in Voat's voting algorithm, it's a little lengthy but please bear with me.

The Posts:

1) Five Classic Pieces of False Logic the Right Usues in Order to Promote Gun Cluture : OP- @donarty 2 day old account (+297|-265) https://voat.co/v/politics/1439973

http://archive.is/RvVqm

2) The Ideology Of Madness: Five Ways The American Right Has Become Just Like The Nazis. : OP - @Sicario 4 day old account (+441|-228) https://voat.co/v/politics/1433790

https://archive.is/jDDYj

3) 5 of the Most Dangerous Delusions of the Far Right : OP - @Wild_Bill_Hickock 2 day old account (+415|-289) https://voat.co/v/politics/1434331

http://archive.is/ueSDE

4) VIDEO: How Right-Wing Lies Become Mainstream News : OP - @Wild_Bill_Hickock 2 day old account (+413|-267) https://voat.co/v/news/1434333

http://archive.is/wBagi

The Similarities:

Notice the titles on 3 out of 4 are very similar, they are a list of the top 5. This is very telling in identifying one user posting under alts. The amount of upvotes between post # 3 and 4 are almost identical and uncharacteristically high for voting on Voat even if we have received a higher amount of new users after the Reddit fallout. The accounts were also created in a similar timeline and are new accounts. One interesting thing I picked up on was on both @Wild_Bill_Hickock and @Sicario 's comments they both use similar writing styles and wording. One word that stuck out to me was the use of the word ", brother" in reference to other posters (example 1 & 2). Another interesting thing to note is that these post 3 and 4 were posted in two separate subverses and yet they have very similar upvotes. These similarities are way too much of a coincidence for them not to be the same person or group.

The Control:

Like in any theory you would want to test to see if this is something that could be replicated. I tried to replicate the results of the artificially upvoted posts and was not able to gain even the slightest traction. Some may ask "well maybe there are not enough politically left/liberal articles being posted on Voat..." I used articles from the same liberal sites that were used in the brigaders posts (Media Matters & Alternet.org) and was immediately downvoted to oblivion. Another interesting thing to note is that previous posts with these two websites have NEVER received traction on Voat before these brigade posts (example 1 & 2, this is another very good indication that we're being brigaded and manipulated.

My Conclusions:

1) We're definitely being brigaded, I'm sure it has something to do with the PizzaGate people coming over from Reddit as this has happened within the same time frame as PizzaGate being banned from Reddit.

2) I'm speculating that whoever is orchestrating these brigades are doing them with the purpose of measuring how to manipulate Voat's algorithm for future attacks or to change a narrative. These posts that have hit the front page would merely be tests to see what it would take to change the front page of Voat as the voting manipulation was done on default subs. I wouldn't be surprised if the group or persons behind this are being paid to figure out and exploit our community since we seem to be taking a good portion of Reddit's fall out as Reddit continues to take missteps. I'm sure these groups/individuals want to be ahead of the game when the time comes and more people migrate to Voat.

Although I know they're busy I'm calling out to the admins @atko and @PuttItOut if they have a chance to look into this and make any improvements they can to prevent the voting system from being gamed. Also if anyone on here has any recommendations or additional input feel free to do so.

Note:

Here are the users I'm 99% sure are brigading as well as some suspicious ones:

@Sicario https://archive.is/seEQN

@Wild_Bill_Hickock https://archive.is/cubMN

@donarty

@Is_Thou_Mad (Only posted in submissions by Sicario/Wild_Bill_Hickock) https://archive.is/WUBBA

Sidenote:

I wanted to point out if you search mediamatters or alternet on Voat's search you will see that @HenryCorp posts the most from these two sites. Media Matters has already been shown to have a group actively shilling on conservative websites as per their President.

eBev ago

Yes, it is! Some people have TOO MUCH TIME! And some pretty nasty, psychologically-damaged minds.

eBev ago

Forgive me if this is a stupid question; but in regards to slimgur, who took 'em down for talking about My People? (I'm rather grandmotherly-shamed...in the old-time, traditional way!)

fujin ago

To help you can vote and post content even if you feel it won't go anywhere and if you can donate. The admins work full-time so they can't dedicate staff or much resources past what they are currently doing.

I wonder if that's just the world, or that's just old age?

I believe with age you start to see the same pattern over and over with different public personas in power but they follow the same agenda no matter their personal ideology. That would be people conspiring behind the scenes to achieve some goal.

fujin ago

Maybe a few but rarely do people go against the herd and if you look at the number of downvotes the organic users are "fighting off the virus" so to speak.

Rellik88 ago

Thought it was weird for Wild_Bill to call me brother. It struck me as odd.

fujin ago

What do you mean, brother? :)

draegspir ago

We should to expect this to happen more in the future. Also, we should not take articles being upvoted to the top as being the popular opinion. We as users have a responsibility to ensure truth is being upvoted while lies are brought to light (not necessarily suppressed). When I was over at reddit during the election, it was the first time where I felt like my upvotes and downvotes mattered!

eBev ago

I'm reading this stuff, and trying to keep up. I don't know if this is part of what you're talking about but: I hate to give down-votes because it seems like such a nasty thing to do. I think I read somewhere that the best thing to do when you want to kick someone in the tender parts is not to down-vote but to counter-post. ? So...if I think something is a lie, should I downvote it?

VoteOrDie ago

There was a post from a while ago on Reddit about CTR suggesting that Reddit could sue CTR for tortious interference. If Reddit wasn't in bed with CTR maybe that could have been a possibility, but maybe this could be a route taken for Voat?

wesofx ago

I suspected the "5 reason gun" guy. Seeing this it's obvious what's going on.

durchfall ago

I'm speculating that whoever is orchestrating these brigades are doing them with the purpose of measuring how to manipulate Voat's algorithm for future attacks or to change a narrative.

Voat is open source nigga, they can just look there.

mamwad ago

I'm busy setting up a PC so I'll just quote Kropotkin:

If men had a deeply developed feeling of equity they would not oppress other men. Politicians would not cheat their electors; Parliament would not be a chattering and cheating box, and Charles Warren’s policemen would refuse to bludgeon the Trafalgar Square talkers and listeners. And if men were gallant, self-respecting, and less egotistic, even a bad capitalist would not be a danger; the workers would have soon reduced him to the role of a simple comrade-manager. Even a king would not be dangerous, because the people would merely consider him as a fellow unable to do better work, and therefore entrusted with signing some stupid papers sent out to the other cranks calling themselves kings.

But men are not those free-minded, independent, provident, loving, and compassionate fellows which we should like to see them. And precisely, therefore, they must not continue living under the present system which permits them to oppress and exploit one another.

Yes, we have bad tendencies as a species, which is precisely why we should limit the power of political, economic, religious, and social authorities.

piratse ago

Awesome job man. @atko and @puttitout

Butelczynski ago

Personally I hardly ever pay attention to up/down votes.For the same reason I avoid up/down voting anything unless I have particularly good/bad day.I don't care for them.I know very well that some are just clickbaits,some are shitposts and a lot of them are up/down voted by brigades.I witnessed that way back at Reddit so I just tune out.F that.There seems to be more than enough reasonable folks out here to discuss issues without going bonkers (you know who you are ).

mamwad ago

No, libertarian socialism rejects the idea of republicanism and favors organizing society through radical, democratic unionism. It favors an economic system of mutual aid over one that is based on individual competition.

xeemee ago

I used articles from the same liberal sites that were used in the brigaders posts (Media Matters & Alternet.org) and was immediately downvoted to oblivion

hehe - i didn't see that before with my beer-goggles on - now that's what you call taking a hit for the team :)

great work and i hope it draws the attention it deserves from the overlords

fujin ago

I hurt my brain reading the bullshit.

xeemee ago

no doubt - i only read through the 'Five Classic Pieces of False Logic the Right Usues in Order to Promote Gun Cluture' thread - and i read nearly all of it last night (190+ comments i believe before i stopped reading) and that's where the vote manipulation really exposed itself to me because 90+% of the comments were not in favor of the OP

also no doubt you spent a lot of time on this - again, thanks - very much appreciated by many i am sure

mamwad ago

For liberalism. Libertarian socialism isn't liberalism.

WeaponsGradeAutist ago

Thanks a lot for this. I'm under an alt atm but fuck this shit. I like this place, and you regulars. I came here over a year ago because I can't stand most of 'them'.

I will piss in my own Cheerios before I let this place go the way of the rest.

8Hz_WAN_IP ago

Brigade implies a large group of people, this is clearly the work of one guy that must have a script to create new accounts and vote on his own posts.

heywoodnj ago

Yes either someone found a hole in the algo or someone paid big money to a Bangalore based keyboard monkey farm to change the narrative. The rule of 100 ccp must be a pain in the ass for them. But an anti gun scree with 300 up- voats here? Not organic not possible. Such a post here would be shoved back so far up the OPs ass that highly paid orgy pro couldn't find it .

8Hz_WAN_IP ago

More telling is the lack of comments, if 300 people up voted a thread you would expect a few dozen to comment.

heywoodnj ago

Yep and the ups paced the downs throughout the day to keep it 30-40 up. Knew it smelled like bull shit this morning so I watched the thread through the day.

When Atko and puttin get a chance they should look at the unique ip's of the up votes. The truth may point to itself.

J20 ago

Great post, thanks for the info.

mamwad ago

I'm going to take the time to plug /v/progressiveFS for non-manipulated, non-click bait libertarian left wing content.

I have to admit, this seems like an obvious exploit. It is funny, however, that I was calling for a solution to brigading for about a year, but no one cared about it until left wing click bait made it to the front page. If you don't think some far right fags are doing the same thing, I got some bullshit to sell you.

Any system that can be gamed will be gamed by anyone who thinks "winning" is more important than principles.

SockGuy ago

How do I email someone within voat?

Disappointed ago

[email protected] <----if you mean about socks this is the one.

[email protected]

If you have no luck there let me know

eBev ago

LOL @ socks!! That one took me a moment! I thought it must be some tech jargon since most of that goes over my head--and slaps me when it flies by!

Disappointed ago

You must be getting old like me or already there, lol.

SockGuy ago

Good deal. I look forward to working with voat. Email sent.

Disappointed ago

@puttitout @atko see above.

Heffisntmyrealname ago

Ok. I'm convinced they are testing the voat waters in anticipation to control the surge from Reddit. But I'm not familiar with voat mods or how/if they have dealt with these issues previously so what happens if nothing gets changed? Where can we go from here?

doctor_eat_less ago

Upvoated for protection of the community.

trumpisright666 ago

Hillary supporters, Demofails and left wingers I bet.

eBev ago

Always, donchaknow. :(

Tancred ago

Possible solution:

Every x amount of votes, you lose the ability to vote and need to solve a captcha to regain it.

@Atko @PuttItOut

Tancred ago

I was very confused when I saw your control group posts come from such an old account, but now it all makes sense. :D

Good work collecting evidence!

fujin ago

Don't worry, I was confused when I was reading that crap too :)

LostandFound ago

Spot on. Its that bad reddit noticed Voat.co is being attacked by hillary shills [evidence]

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5f3pt3/voatco_is_being_attacked_by_hillary_shills/

Wrongthink-Factory ago

The guy who's doing this shit has been around since before the pizzagate subverse was banned on reddit.

It is just that now instead of just posting comments trying to insult voaters with inane garbage he's also started to post news articles and use bots to upvoat them. He also seems to be using these bots to upvoat his comments. This use of bots seems to have started when the pizzagaters came in, probably to push them the other way politically.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if the guy is serious. I feel like he is just trolling us, and my evidence for that would be because he is not subtle at all. He wants it to be known that he's using bots in his comments and submissions, and he wants it to be known that he despises the right wing. So this doesn't seem like an attempt to manipulate our thoughts.

eBev ago

If somebody's that easily manipulated, would they still be conservative? We've been screwed over and beaten up so much, I think it takes a pretty strong-willed person to maintain.

MrPim ago

Interestingly kevdude posted this to PV this morning: shills for hire, which lists Voat as a site to be manipulated https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/1440697

fujin ago

Ha, great post. We made it boys! I would be surprised if these guy are messing with our system or have been hired for these.

MrPim ago

Interesting coincidence though.

IrbyTremorRimsMe ago

Man the power of the internet. It is goddamn scary how a few people and bots can wield so much power.

fujin ago

haha, brother.

Dragonfly44 ago

Agree. New user here (no, never a red-shitter), I upvoted at least one of these so other folks might join in the fun of beating the snot out of it too.

purr ago

If you want to blunt this attack, voting is a good place to start. The more legitimate upvoats and downvoats there are, the less power the manipulators have.

lakeyosemit ago

Might be the work of robots.

I myself have three bots running doing all sorts of things on reddit. Reddit has some control on voting though, it "shadowbans" votes from the same IP as far as I could tell (there's probably some criteria to exclude votes). I have no idea if Voat has any control over that. Even if it does, someone with access to a small (300 slaves) botnet could easily exploit Voat's API to do this kind of shit.

eBev ago

I like your name. (Keeping up with your tech stuff, though...)

KosherHiveKicker ago

Upvoated the exposure of this, and more importantly the effort behind it.

AmaleksHairyAss ago

This is solid dickery. I admire it.

thatguyiam ago

You are doing God's work, son! But i don't know theres anything we can do at this point. How the hell did they get the upvoats? If it was by a bunch of dormant accounts that just log in to vote and log out, maybe we can have these accounts that all they do is vote, maybe they can be deleted? Are they bots that also post stories? Maybe banning bots should be considered?

fujin ago

There's quite a bit of options to curtail this but it's up to the admins and I know they're busy with their personal lives at the moment. It wouldn't take an awfully long time to implement (create a penalty period per IP to create a new account, limit new accounts to 1 per IP per month, ban known VPN IP addresses, only allow upvotes for people who have made at least 5 posts, etc). This just takes time to plan out and add it to the system.

xeemee ago

they're busy with their personal lives at the moment

that damn thing always gets in the way of the important stuff :)

create a penalty period per IP to create a new account [...] ban known VPN IP addresses

wouldn't have solved this problem i don't think - already protection in place for this as far as voting (and banning VPN IP's is an infringement on privacy)

pastaispasta ago

perhaps @atko and @puttitout will find this interesting

beren ago

perhaps @atko and @puttitout should finally pull out the ban hammer and finally get rid of these paid shills including @HenryCorp

Bricolagefantasy1 ago

On the contrary, you should track and note the activities. observe how they behave. If they are indeed an account to gouge voat.com algorithm, then they should be track and isolated(when the time come).

  1. as a study for future case.

  2. gotta figure out the extent and who is doing it. who is paying them, how extensive their effort are.

  3. provide counter measure (not just algorithm), but also inform voat user. and educate how to optimally create better community. (ffs. if you see good post, up vote.)

beren ago

This is very logical and pragmatic, but I don't @atko and @puttitout have the time for fixing bugs, improving the site, and what you're suggesting here. Just ban the cunts.

heygeorge ago

fujin, thank you for your diligence. Wonderful work, lad.

NOTJIMJIM_404 ago

i recall watching a youtube podcast interview where they were asking him all these questions on a date he was going to be revealing shit, and out of nowhere u can clearly hear him answer a question exactly like another previous before, the two host look at each other kinda gasp and the show goes on for a bit longer and ends. if you can find that, it was amazing

Mr_Brisket ago

ESL comments are fun

NOTJIMJIM_404 ago

fixed that shit, i can see the reddit shill made it it across months ago.

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heygeorge ago

Did you mean to respond to this comment? I'm confused. 404, reference not found.

Sciency ago

Its an old trick to crowd out the top comment space so nothing useful can yet done. Voat isnt so different from reddit that people put comments in the wrong thread.

heygeorge ago

Thanks, Sciency. Looking at the commentors history, I have a hard time figuring what else besides shilling is likely. Do you think this is potentially AI?

Sciency ago

Calling it AI might be a tad generous, but yes, I suspect some sort of script.

What really weird about all this, is that voat was going down every few minutes, right up until the pizzagate sub was banned, then things were normal again. Why on earth would the servers suddenly be all dandy with thousands of new users?

I suspect that the attacks were meant to drive down the number of positive/smart voaters, and the latest wave of new users is being used as cover for a whole bunch of reddits worst idiots/shills. They pretty much get free ccp for posting anywhere about pizzagate, and they they can vote down real news.

Ad that to the suspicious history behind the company that provides voats hoasting sercice, and I really dont know what to make of things.

Lots of fuckery is going on, that much I would bet on.

heygeorge ago

Why on earth would the servers suddenly be all dandy with thousands of new users?

From what I've gathered, one of admin's goals was to float Voat on absolutely minimal hardware, and the bug/alien error was one of the prices we (users) paid for that. Once the traffic surged, a call for donations went out and admin's announced very clearly that they staved off the bug with hardware advancement. This is my personal take on things just being around and occasionally asking questions.

As for my original ignorant note, yes, AI is beyond generous, but you see where I'm coming from.

I figure you're referring to Cloudflare's history and yes, it's dodgy but they seem to be the most tolerable and simple to use alternative to suffering DDOS attacks. I think it's more of a 'birds of a feather' thing than outright collusion. But I can see where tin foil is applicable.