Currently, almost anyone in the Fediverse can see Lemmys votes. Lemmy admins can see votes, as well as mods. Only regular Lemmy users can’t. Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?

There is a discussion going on right now considering “making the Lemmy votes public” but I think that premisse is just wrong. The votes are public already, they’re just hidden from Lemmy users. Anyone from a kbin/mbin/fedia instance can check out the votes if they are so inclined.

The users right now may fall into a false sense of privacy when voting because the votes are hidden from Lemmy users. If you want to vote something and not show up on the vote list, please create another account to support that type of content and don’t tell anyone.

  • OpenStars@discuss.online
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    3 months ago

    Unlike commenting and posting, which offers the who, what, where, and when parts of the message passing process, voting on Lemmy (now, for non-admins) is inherently an unequal process. Imagine if someone could send you an email whenever they wanted, but you were prevented from knowing who or even from what instance it is from, or when it was sent, do you think that could open up a potential for some variety of abuse? Or texting, phone calls, showing up at your door, etc.

    Knowing the identity of the voter is an important part of properly receiving the “message”. It also increases freedom of choice, b/c otherwise the only way to prevent such messages (if, let’s take it as a given that some people find them annoying) would be to turn off voting entirely, either by going to one of the instances that does that, or just ignoring all (down-)votes yourself.

    If we want the Fediverse to grow, and in particular to include less emotionally stunted humans that actually care when someone says something about them, good or bad, this will be a necessity. (Also, I was speaking tongue-in-cheek there, but genuinely social standards do vary across this wide world, and it really would increase content if there were not only more but different types of people, especially those most likely to generate quality content.)

    And as other non-Lemmy methods of access to the Fediverse provide that feature - k/mbin, piefed, sublinks - Lemmy will fall increasingly behind if it were to ignore this very basic feature.

    Making the votes public also increases honesty, since they are already public now. And if you don’t want to know who down-(up?-)votes you then… don’t look? But for those who want to know, it will be a great feature to have.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    3 months ago

    How do mods see them? As far as I am aware, you have to be an instance admin. But it’s not difficult or time consuming to spin one up and I doubt the average user of Lemmy is technically incapable; most of the Fediverse users in general seem to be IT people and developers.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        3 months ago

        I suspect you need access to the database.

        Looking at the source, “comment_like” seems to be where they’re stored.

    • laverabe@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      someone commented on github (I think it was Desallines) that the vote viewing feature has been available since 0.19.4 . Lemmy world is still on 0.19.3 .

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        3 months ago

        Being able to see the moderation history linked directly to a post was added then - but I don’t see vote viewing nor recall hearing about it, which would have been a huge deal.

        • laverabe@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Nothing4You commented Aug 14, 2024 •

          mods can already see votes in communities they moderate since 0.19.4, so this would be reducing what is visible today:

          and

          Dessalines commented 5 days ago

          I’d like to clarify that mods should only be able to see votes for the communities they mod only.

          Admins can see all votes.

          I dunno, we’re on 0.19.3 so I don’t see it but I guess it’s there.

          https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967#issuecomment-2289596923

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            3 months ago

            Ah, mods only, and then only for their own communities - well, still, that’s something (though I’d prefer prefer it opened up for everyone). Thanks for the link.

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This is all I see as lead mod of 3d printing. I also checked and desktop is the same both in desktop mobile view and on my laptop.

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Get rid of votes.

    They’re only useful for ranking content and content is only useful in the context of ad revenue.

    You don’t have to be on reddit anymore.

    • skye@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      And useful to let you know if a post is actually genuine/useful, or something you should probably ignore and disregard because everyone else that read it before you discarded it as bad

      no it must only be for content farming

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yes, a return to the unstructured hellscape glory of unranked comments of yesteryear. Every thread starting with a resounding “First!!1!!”. Relevant or interesting things hidden on page 5 of 31. Spam lurking around every corner, as a treat.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    One situation I’ve repeatedly faced that could be solved by fully public voting is having those debates when someone puts a single downvote on my opponent’s comments.

    Silly, yes, but it may look like I am downvoting a person to aggravate. I am not, it’s not me! :D

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    At least NOW I can find out exactly who can call me out for saying something stupid, and thank that person for providing me with valuable information and knowledge.

    Downvotes are actually kinda useful, even I benefit from them.

    • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      In LiveLeak all votes were public. What happened was a lot less downvoting, but also aggrevated users would stalk your page and leave mean messages if you downvoted their comment.

      On the other hand, it was really easy to spot trolls trying to manipulate the narratives, Hasbarah and Russian trolls were really active on LiveLeak. This allowed me to block them and keep them from bombing my comments anytime I said something critical.

  • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    One benefit to vote transparency for admins is mod monitoring options.

    Reddit is infested with vote manipulation via bots. At least on the Fediverse it seems like both admins and mods might have more options.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    Votes should absolutely be public. They were on KBin, and it made people more civil for it because you could be shamed if you were dislike trolling or liking all of your own posts/comments to make them look better (which is something you actively have to do on here, unlike Reddit).

    Given this place is pseudo-anonymous anyways, and people comment far more personal and identifiable info here anyways (which tbf you should be careful about), I think public votes would do much more good than harm.

  • asukaakari@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    The question of whether Lemmy votes should be anonymous is an important one, balancing transparency with privacy. Public voting can encourage accountability, but anonymity might lead to more honest and unbiased voting behavior. If you’re interested in exploring the pros and cons of this issue further, chatgpt 日本語 can provide a detailed discussion and help you form a well-rounded opinion on the matter.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      The question of whether Lemmy votes should be anonymous is an important one, balancing transparency with privacy. Public voting can encourage accountability, but anonymity might lead to more honest and unbiased voting behavior. If you’re interested in exploring the pros and cons of this issue further, chatgpt 日本語 can provide a detailed discussion and help you form a well-rounded opinion on the matter.

      Hello, low-effort bot.

      • [email protected]@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Yup.
        This kind of spam has been going on for a while and is usually removed promptly.
        Sorry, I think our local murder bot was offline at the time.
        Anyway, they’ve since been banned along with a several alt accounts.
        Don’t hesitate to report those if you see more.

        Oh and I think we would rather not advertise their spam URL if you wouldn’t mind editing the link out from the quoted part.

        Thanks,

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Don’t hesitate to report those if you see more.

          Thanks, will do.

          editing the link out from the quoted part

          Done. Thanks for all the work you do to keep this place running smoothly.

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I just got insulted & falsely accused of downvoting someone yesterday. I had chose to give them a second downvote to prove that the first one didn’t come from my account. I admit, I have always been curious about the specific sources of votes but If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think actually knowing would leave me better off. I think people already read too much into these votes in the first place and it gives the ego-maniacs too much to obsess over.

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    One way to anonymize voting, if desired, could be just make a mess out of who voted what in the logs. I vote something, some other random user’s name is logged. Or maybe that could be used to deter scrapers and make the incorrect logging reverseable somehow that requires actual human interaction that cant be automated.

  • Damage@slrpnk.net
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    3 months ago

    If I vote something I’m expressing my opinion just like I would with comment, and those are not anonymous.
    I get that people are worried about griefers and psychos, but anonymity is just a (poor) cure for the symptoms, not for the disease; users who don’t behave should be banned, and if their instance turns out to be a detriment to the community, they should be defederated.

    The anonymity we should ensure is the one of the person behind the username, to avoid doxxing and cyber-bullying.

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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          3 months ago

          Because too many mods are power tripping assholes and I say that as someone whose been a mod in various corners of the Internet since at least 2000.

          The best mods, and admins, are nearly invisible and as close to drama free as possible.

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I am Palestinian and I just got banned from world news ml for saying that some Israeli hostages experienced rape/sexual assault/abuse without “credible evidence”. Somehow the mod equated this with me not giving a fuck about Palestinian prisoners of war.

            No my man… I was raped myself as a teen. So to me, all rapes are equal no matter who does it to whom.