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.

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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)