YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private
i.imgur.com
Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...
What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
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Some people take unkindly to downvotes. On Reddit they’d just add and “Edit: fuck you guys and your downvotes… pussies!” And be gone.
On Lemmy they can target you personally. Maybe search your post history in an attempt to dox you. Redditors would expect this possibility if they commented and might refrain from doing so to avoid the potential harassment. Most people would never suspect that it could happen as the result of a simple upvote.
Okay, that's a fair point I had not considered. Thanks!
Yeah this is definitely a risk if this platform keeps growing. I can definitely see this being a reason to switch off downvotes (some instances have already)