then analyze the voting behavior of the accounts

How do you do that? I’m noticing much more downvoting bots lately.

The bot creators were probably just testing the waters to make sure it works. I’ve been a victim of vote-manipulation bots; they downvote attacked me. So glad to see people are trying to get a handle on this.

Thanks for this! I am noticing more and more vote manipulation bots on Lemmy. Annoying af, so you’re awesome for researching that!

But I’ve noticed your comments since this wee little exchange more and more, esp. on db0, and I like how you get down.

haha, thanks, friend!!

Careful though, saying that you even kinda like Universal Monk on Lemmy these days puts ya at risk of “guilt by association.” lol They’ll probably just say you’re an alt of me and that I’m talking to myself, so…

I see soooo many people accuse of being an alt of me. Someone made a list of names and said, some variation of, “Here’s a list of all Universal Monk’s alts so you can pre-emptively block:…” And none of them were me. lol

As for selling you on PieFed. Hmm, I don’t really have the knowledge base to do that. I do like it though. It uses much less resources/memory. Community is growing. And it’s a good backup for when/if Lemmy fails. It does the same thing faster and quicker.

I personally don’t catch as much hate there, and the admins seem to be much more “as long as you aren’t breaking any laws, you do you” in attitude.

Way more options for organizing your the communities you follow, what you wanna see when you log on, etc.

I think if you do a quick search for “piefed vs Lemmy,” you’ll get much better feedback about both platforms than I can give you.

Truth! Lemmy is very anti-crypto, but it has a lot of advantages in socialist and anarchist circles. Sometimes Lemmy just hates anything that is popular, because they think it means “rich.”

Even tho the average Lemmy poster makes more than the average Americans wage.

Yeah, well I have been lucky, but I always cash out early. But it’s hard for me not to just be all in all the time! I do love watching the stands and the news about it though.

Yep! And yes, you are overthinking it. If you are worried about them profiting from you, then just pirate their stuff.

Join a union and ask for their advice.

Yep! But here in the US, unfortunately not everyone has that ability. The last few years of my working life I was union, and it was amazing. I’d never work at a non-union place again.

I never understood the appeal of Tik Tok. I hated it the second it came out. What’s the point of watching a 15-second vid of someone lip-syncing to a song?! I don’t get the appeal.

but even before Musk took over it was ALWAYS a fundamentally negative force.

Yep! What’s hilarious to me is that so many people would post how much they hated Twitter, how it was ruining society, etc. Then Musk gets it, then all of a sudden people say they are gonna stop using it. Ok, well you hated it just as much before, but now you are not gonna use it?

Also, they didn’t stop using it. The platform didn’t die, like everyone gleefully predicted, and it’s still sucks. It sucks equally as bad as before Musk.

I quit twitter long before Musk, and never got back on.

Lemmy is quickly becoming the same way. People have started entire threads in different forums to try to get me banned from Lemmy, just because they don’t agree with me. Rather than just be mad at me and block me, they legit go to other threads, and even call out admins, in an effort to get me banned from every instance.

All because I didn’t vote the way they wanted me! lolol

I still prefer Lemmy to Reddit though!

Preach! I’m a fairly terrible boyfriend, and I have no idea why girls continue to give me a chance. And that just reinforces my bad behaviour.

Good for you, brother! Stay strong. I’ve stayed drug-free/alcohol free my entire life, but only because I’ve watched loved ones go thru addiction, so I realize how tough it is. The fact that you got out of it after so long, is a major accomplishment. Good on ya, mate.

Addiction is not a joke people.

This is why I hate to see how casual Lemmy is about drugs and alcohol. Some actually brag about posing while high or drunk–and then get a shitton of upvotes for it. They don’t realize how quick it happens. and how addiction doesn’t care who you are. It can happen to anyone.

Great post!

Greed has altered the course of life many times over.

I continually fight this myself. I made a fair amount of profit in crypto, but I 100 percent realize that it’s just blind luck. I like the idea of it and I love the news about it, so it’s very difficult for me to not to go 100 percent in every time I see a trend!

So far, I’ve resisted the urge to go to crazy with it, but ugh, it’s tough . And I lie to my gf and tell her that I just follow, but don’t invest. So I’m pretty much the kind of asshole that I grew up despising. lol

I’ve never invested more than I can afford to lose, and cash out the minute I make a little profit. But I can see how addicting it is and how easily some people could fall off the cliff.

Good points!

Could just be sincere disagreement and I’m chasing ghosts, but I’ve seen some stuff that looks REAL fishy.

Agreed. But another problem is that some people think anyone who disagrees with them is a troll.

Just today, I got banned from two communities. The reason? According to the mod: “known zero-sum narcissistic troll/spam user.” Which is wild, because I’ve barely posted in either place. I never said anything political or controversial as far as I can tell—and none of my comments were even removed.

And I think the last time I posted there was a few weeks ago?! LMAO.

The only thing I can figure is that some mod or admin saw me posting elsewhere, remembered they hated me for being a Socialist, and made up a reason to ban me. Totally random. Totally ok, their community. Their rules. Just like my community, my rules (as in I ban serial downoters).

No real loss—I rarely comment there anyway, and apparently nothing I said was bad enough to delete. Still, banned.

Lemmy’s a strange place. The echo-chamber mentality might be what kills it in the end though. If it turns into Reddit 2.0, what’s the point? And I am adding to the echo chamber by banning serial downvoters. So, meh…

I love Lemmy, but I can totally see it withering if it becomes harder to navigate and more toxic than Reddit. That said, I refuse to be bullied off the platform. I’ll be here until the servers go dark.

But I’m on PieFed, and really loving that platform too. So no big loss if Lemmy goes away, because I’m already on the Lemmy replacement. :)

What’s also funny is that now that people are finally talking about “serial downvoters” being a problem—and now that more users can actually see who’s doing the downvoting—a lot of those serial downvoters have suddenly stopped.

Personally, I’ve noticed a huge difference. For a long time, it didn’t matter what I posted—no matter the subject, I’d get flooded with downvotes almost instantly. That’s just stopped.

Now the voting feels way more natural and organic—based on content, not just someone hating me and hitting downvote the second they see my name.

Yeah, I feel the same. So sad that they are so obsessive that they let things like posting on Lemmy take over their lives. I’ll never understand people like that. It’s just Lemmy and none of this is real life. lol

Wondering if this is personal grudge

Definitely a personal grudge. It was against someone who the downvoter was convinced is an alt of mine (it’s not).

Several months ago, I mentioned how weird it was for someone to have an ai girlfriend in general, not calling anyone out directly. One particular dude stalked me for months over that comment, and serial downvoted everything I did.

Then he put his sights on someone else (the subject of the scenario in OP’s example), wrongly thinking it was me, and started stalking and harassing them, and calling them my name. Literally saying, “I know you’re Universal Monk!” Over and over. Again, the person he thought was an alt of me, isn’t me. I don’t have any alt names. I just use my Universal Monk name on any instance I use.

As soon as it was mentioned that the serial downvoter guy may be involved in sending the Nicole fediverse chick spam (many of the same addys, obsession, etc), the downvoter deleted his account.

I have no idea if he was involved in the nicole spam, but the M.O. of revenge and obsession definitely fit the profile for both the incidents. Also pretty suspicious that the minute someone mentioned he may be involved in Nicole spam, he bailed and deleted his main account and a lot of his alt accounts. lol