# Thoughts on using alternate accounts to boost like counts?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [August 25, 2020, 4:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976 "2020-08-25T04:25:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Chaboi\_3000](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Chaboi_3000)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 4:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/1 "2020-08-25T04:25:54Z")
I’ve recently noticed some of our members were using alts to boost the likes count for the badges(Even in DM’s) As a moderator, should I be concerned of this? I’m a little concerned with the notion of having to “cheat” your way to badges rather than rightfully earning it. What’s a good approach to this?
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 5:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/2 "2020-08-25T05:17:30Z")
What do you mean by alts?
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 5:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/3 "2020-08-25T05:24:31Z")
Alts = Alternatives (additional accounts i.e. fake accounts created by someone)
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 5:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/4 "2020-08-25T05:25:40Z")
Oh. Sock puppets.
In that case, badge gaming isn’t the worst of your problems! You should definitely be nipping that behaviour in the bud!
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### Author:  [@P2W](https://meta.discourse.org/u/P2W)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 3:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/5 "2020-08-25T15:09:14Z")
If anyone has robust custom badges above and beyond the out of the box ones, I’d love to see them in action!
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 3:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/6 "2020-08-25T15:12:56Z")
I’m inclined to agree with @hawk, you don’t have a problem with badge farming, you have an issue with [sockpuppeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)), of which badge farming is one symptom.
Abusing badges isn’t ideal, but there are far more wide-reaching and potentially damaging things a disenfranchised user can do with access to multiple identities.
Have you tied specific rewards or incentives to badges? The first thing you need to figure out is why acquiring these badges matters to those users. Have the threshholds to acquire these badges changed from the defaults?
Are you using the fingerprinting plugin? If not it might be worthwhile installing, although it’s far from foolproof to identify sockpuppet accounts.
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### Author:  [@Mevo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mevo)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/7 "2020-08-25T15:21:21Z")
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> [Sockpuppeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)), of which badge farming is one symptom.
I get your view, but I understood OP the other way around: That he felt badge farming was the **cause** of sockpupetting, because getting the badges (and also maybe “likes”) were the primary goal behind the creation of what he called “alts”.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/8 "2020-08-25T15:23:45Z")
Hence:
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> Have you tied specific rewards or incentives to badges? The first thing you need to figure out is why acquiring these badges matters to those users. Have the threshholds to acquire these badges changed from the defaults?
The problem is that they’re acquiring badges by cheating through the use of a sockpuppet. They aren’t content with waiting to receive those badges organically so have chosen to “cheat”. Unless they’ve been tied to a specific reward though it’s not likely to be harmful.
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/9 "2020-08-25T15:32:19Z")
We definitely don’t allow duplicate accounts on our forum before prior permission from the moderation team because they could:
- Like farming (to get higher TL etc)
- Get more votes
- Increase TL
- Get badges by cheating
* * *
My thoughts on this his that it isn’t the end of the day. Although it isn’t the best thing to do, you can ask the admin to enable this setting if they haven’t already. `flag sockpuppets`
If you know who is doing it maybe drop them a message. I agree with Stephen here also
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> The first thing you need to figure out is why acquiring these badges matters to those users.
You can also manually revoke the badges?
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### Author:  [@Chaboi\_3000](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Chaboi_3000)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 10:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/10 "2020-08-25T22:46:33Z")
The main issue I see is users using those badges to “Brag” about their “Superiority” towards others, which they didn’t even rightfully earn.
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### Author:  [@Chaboi\_3000](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Chaboi_3000)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2020, 10:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/11 "2020-08-25T22:47:13Z")
> [@ondrej](#):
>
> You can also manually revoke the badges?
Revoking automatically “unrevokes” the badges for some reason.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2020, 8:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-on-using-alternate-accounts-to-boost-like-counts/161976/13 "2020-08-26T20:17:12Z")
If the badge issuance is automated then revoking it will be undone the next time the jobs run.
You need to eliminate the accounts responsible.