Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
There are a lot of arguments about social pressuring users into voting a certain way. But not having votes public also leads to a lot of vote manipulation. Especially from the Hasbro’s.
Lemmy is a lot like the early days of the internet right now. Very easy to abuse and mostly running on users not doing so. Bot accounts will start being a bigger and bigger issue with the growth and Lemmy so there needs to be a way to combat this.
Votes are also already not private as many users said. Just by running an instance one can see all the votes.
Have you SEEN the drama that happens in this place? I feel like this is just asking for weird nobodies to harass anyone who quietly disagrees with them.
If this passes then I’m outta here.
I really don’t care about what any of you think, so go for it. Perhaps better discussion will come from it. And I’d like to block users with consistent negative behaviours.
It should be noted that anyone can set up a Lemmy server and track votes already. For instance, for this post, I see this screen:
This is available for both comments and posts. The database itself contains even more details, such as time and date of when the server broadcast the vote (which is often immediately or a few seconds later).
It’s not as easy to do for trolls to set up a server, but comments, posts, favourites, votes, edits, and deletions should be considered public when it comes to most fediverse protocols, unless the server does not federate (like truth.social) or only federates with a few select servers. It’s trivial to edit software like Lemmy to keep every edit or undone vote, and there’s nothing your server admins will notice.
Kbin/Mbin show votes too.
Edit: But I think downvotes are hidden by default now.
That’s way too much work. I just logged into my original account on kbin.social and tapped on the activity button to see votes before that instance went down. If I want to see votes again I can set up an account on any kbin or mbin instance in less than a minute and do the same thing.
Huh, I didn’t know kbin did that. Useful!
No need for a Lemmy server, kbin/mbin put it in their interface
https://kbin.earth/m/[email protected]/t/267356/Lemmy-devs-are-considering-making-all-votes-public-have-your/favourites
Saying the fediverse is good for privacy is just plain false, that’s the kind of information anyone can acquire, even an ad company. All they have to do is federate a silent instance and see all you do.
anyone can set up a Lemmy server
This is not the case. What percentage of the population could set up a Lemmy server, do you think? 1%? 0.1%? Of those, what percentage have the time to set up a Lemmy server? 1%?
As I’ve learned from this thread, it’s actually easier: copy the link to a post or comment into the search bar of any connected mbin instance and you can see all downvotes. If you can find a kbin instance that’s still up, you can also see the downvotes.
Yes I know. Mbin and Kbin should be encouraged to change this. We’re currently in a fairly benign environment so it doesn’t really matter but if the threadiverse ever got big then this could become serious enough to be a cause for defederation.
Idk if I trust that some powermod won’t send me to hell if I vote against something they strongly believe in, akwardtheturtle style
If this mean we’d be able to see who has up- / downvoted a comment on our own and possibly on other people’s posts then I’m all for it. This would be highly useful at filtering out the people here I want nothing to do with.
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I was really confused seeing this post, because I always assumed that Lemmy votes were public. Because how else are instances going to sync them? And indeed, the API exposes them completely, this change will just it easier.
Then I was really confused when I saw so many comments being against it. A lot of “I’ll leave if votes become public” in here. That’s a lot of people who somehow assumed Lemmy was private. Aren’t we all supposed to be Linux nerds in here?
I can’t read Chinese, so I’m not sure what good seeing their names would be. A downvote is a downvote.
Didn’t kbin have a separate mechanism for supporting a post in a more public way? I can’t remember how that worked now, but it was in addition to the regular voting I think?
My posts and comments are already exposed, so it seems like it would make sense to make votes public as well. I think it contributes to the general spirit of the platform.
There’s an easy solution. Dump and create new accounts every week or month or whatever fits your needs. Backup and move your data if you want (lemmy’s data import doesn’t work well with big data though).
Just like changing your password routinely increases your security, new online identity gives you privacy.
I was of the assumption they were private. Please make them private then because I want no one looking at my votes
For my community ( [email protected] ) I would adore this as long as it’s available to Mods of that community and Admin of that instance thing only. Absolutely not for normal users.
We get brigaded nearly every time we post a new thread on anything even remotely controversial so it would really help us filter out people who simply downvote and contribute nothing. From my perspective, if you only want to make a community worse by burying threads, you don’t need to be there at all.
We also make it a rule to not downvote unless the user is not adding to the discussion, and that it is not a disagree button. People generally ignore this, however. It drives me nuts.
This is one of the downfalls of a distributed system. You basically need public votes. Without it, instances lack critical information about the validity of votes. You don’t have a centralized system with back door access to monitor and maintain things.
