P: Bots generating bogus upvotes

[johnrellis]

Beware that bots (human or artificial) are generating large numbers of bogus upvotes, including in the Bugs and Ideas section, devaluing the usefulness of vote totals. These bogus upvotes, at least on my posts, have exploded in the last few weeks, perhaps driven by my increased rate of bug reports for LR 13.

I'm one of the more prolific participants here, especially in Bugs and Ideas, and I've been noticing upvote notifications have been increasing for many months.  And after I reply in Bugs or Ideas, upvotes can arrive within a few minutes, even for one-sentence replies not really deserving of a vote. A random sample of the votes suggests that most but not all are for my posts in Bugs and Ideas. (It's not easy to extract the forum section from my emails.)

Here are the total number of upvotes my posts have received by week since 2/3/22:

I was offline for a week in July and a week in September.

Here are the users generating the most votes who have made a total of 0 or 1 posts themselves:

[D Fosse]

Yes, I've noticed it too. I have had two or three of these ghosts on my tail for a long time. The account names will vary, usually one will be active for two to four weeks, then disappear and another one pops up.

They are immediatly recognizable by upvoting within seconds of your post.

There's also an increase in obviously ChatGPT-generated posts.

What I don't get is - why? Someone must have initiated this. What's the purpose?

[dj_paige]

There was a similar problem at the SAS Communities (which I believe uses the same software), where there appeared to be posts getting immediate up-votes, within seconds of the post. That problem was solved by the moderators, it seems to be gone now. Perhaps the moderators here at Adobe would like to talk to SAS about this, the moderator's name is Chris Hemedinger.

[JohanElzenga]

Bummer! I thought I was finally getting popular...

[C.Cella]

@johnrellis

Indeed I get regularly upvotes vote as soon as I post form those users.

[C.Cella]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography 

Bots upvoting is getting out of hand now.

Even now every FR I make is upvoted basically instantly...I might as well request for a LrC inspired cheeseburger and I would get a few votes.

As much as I like to have my FR voted I do not want fake votes,  can you do something to get rid of the bots/fake voters.

.

[SeanMcCormack]

I spoke to Rikk about it last week and they were looking into then. Definitely not as detailed as this though John. I was prime WILKE territory and almost immediately. Because sometimes the posts were questions on a bug report, it was immediately obvious that it was bogus. 

[johnrellis]

70 - 80% of the upvotes on my posts are now bot-generated:

I've identified many more bots by looking at when they voted relative to the time of the post. Some of these accounts were created by real users and apparently hacked by the bot owners (e.g. "tmickow" was Tom Mickow, who made a couple hundred legitimate posts in years past, ending over a year ago).  

[DdeGannes]

I have also been experiencing this issue.

[C.Cella]

Bots upvoting is getting very frustrating.

After this comment I will instantly get upvotes for naught from the bots.

I will post the screenshots of who's upvoting me.

If you are human don't upvote this.

[johnrellis]

The vote counts in Bugs and Ideas look thoroughly polluted and are no longer useful.  Since 8/1, when the bot flood was fully underway:

- 94% of the bots' votes were for my Bugs and Ideas posts; 6% were for Discussions.

- 68% of the upvotes on my Bugs and Ideas posts were by bots. 

15 of the 26 identified bots all stopped voting on 11/7/23. Only 9 bots have voted in the last week, though from the graph above, the rate of total bot votes is unchanged:

[Bob Somrak]

Thanks for keeping up on this @johnrellis 

[Bob Somrak]

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Gabbar jung

Pappu Ram25823664pwln

These assumed bots have been upvoting posts for a long time.  There are also new ones showing up.  Is there anything being done to cure this issue.  It appears Adobe is ignoring it.

[johnrellis]

I don't know why Adobe hasn't done anything -- the lack of action has made votes much less useful. It's trivial to identify and disable these accounts.

[johnrellis]

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The onslaught of bot votes continues, and at this point, after six months, it's clear it's not important to Adobe:

[F. McLion]

Noted this as well and brought it up in the Backroom.

[Keith Reeder]

Yep, the reason behind this is a complete mystery to me, too - what on Earth is being gained by the perpetrators?

[johnrellis]

Speculation: I wonder if it's some AI-based effort at collecting data on user-generated content.  Given Adobe's passivity and lack of acknowledgement of the issue, I wonder if it's internally generated or otherwise endorsed by Adobe.  

[kglad]

@johnrellis 

adobe's aware of this and several other related issues.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Transferred to Community and bug logged. 

[gary2598866612v1]

Since the community expert claims adopt is aware of the bots. The answer is they don't care. When you have little competition you don't need to care about anything but the investors bottom line

[kglad]

@gary2598866612v1 

incorrect

[Ivan Zajats]

bots are useful, they help us not to feel lonely 🙂 LOL

2-3 likes/votes - not a big deal, I thought it was Adobe's trick

[kglad]

@Ivan Zajats 

it's not clear (to me) what caused the change (and i don't think it's significant because upvotes always seemed meaningless - to me), but there are alot more than a few additional upvotes.  eg, i get 20-50 upvotes per day.

[F. McLion]

Will this ever be fixed ... It's very annoying!

[kglad]

@F. McLion 

you'll get more (or, at least, no less) info in the backroom.