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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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

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.