Lemmy devs are considering making all votes public - have your say

Rimu@piefed.social to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 804 points –
github.com

Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967

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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.

Please be aware that votes are effectively already public, just not shown in the Lemmy UI.

I was unaware of that. I thought it was only accessible to instance admins, and I think that's how it should be.

In Lemmy, only admins and mods can see votes. But most other ActivityPub implementations show votes freely and there's nothing in the protocol that makes votes private. Votes are inherently public - they are only hidden behind a curtain that is very easy to get around in Lemmy.

I mean, this starts to get moot if no one is aware doesn't it. You might dismiss the design as merely artificial obscurity, but if no one is pulling up the data, then the obscurity is working. The "curtain" you cite isn't trivial for the vast majority of users, which is what this is all about. Starting an instance and extracting the desirable data is a pretty tall hurdle where just the effort alone is prohibitive and enough to give someone a chance to calm down.

You don't need to start a whole instance to find votes, you just need a user on any of the services that show votes publicly.

Also, if someone is getting angry about downvotes in a bad way, moderators should just step in. People should learn that votes is just part of the system and accept them.

you just need a user on any of the services that show votes publicly.

Well if that sort of thing started happening, I think it’d be reasonable to have that person blocked, banned or defederated.

IMO, What’s possible doesn’t need to dictate what’s easy and common, especially when there are always balances and countermeasures previously involved.

I have better things to do with my time than just complain to admins/mods/mommy all day long.

I had to go through the experience of blocking stuff twice, and if I had to do that more, I'd just leave. I don't have time for that kind of toxicity in my life.

I forgot other fediverse platforms interact with this place. So upvotes translate to likes on mastodon and other platforms? I still feel like this should be anonymized, but I also get how that could be exploited since likes aren't auditable in that case.

Yes, upvotes are in fact just a Like object in ActivityPub and downvotes is a Dislike object. This translates to various other concepts in other ActvityPub apps, depending on what they choose to call it or how they handle them.

I still feel like this should be anonymized

There is no mechanism for doing this in ActivityPub at the moment. Also, you may not want that because it would then also be hidden from admins and mods, who would then be powerless to discover vote manipulation or downvote brigading and other nasty behavior. Having the votes be transparent is probably better as it allows people to discover this kind of behavior much more easily.

Why would this encourage harrassment? It would just expose harrassment.

There are bots that exist solely to downvote specific users and instances. If you and JacobRimJob downvote each other every time you see each other and eventually argue about it until it devolves into passionate lovemaking, tbats not what harrassment is.

It would also expose upvote bots promoting propoganda.

It would encourage harassment the same way comment history does: someone goes looking for it, sees it, and attacks the person over it.

If I say some shit you disagree with then feel free to engage with me. I'm literally here for discussions. What are you here for?

You should not be ashamed of your vote history.

You should not be ashamed of your vote history.

I agree, people shouldn't be ashamed of their vote history unless they are trying to harass a person or community with a pattern of downvotes.

I still don't want to be harassed for my voting though, nor will I be pressured into defending my votes if a user brings it up.

I want to apologize for my needless aggression earlier. I spent the morning arguing with CCP propogandists and its got me seeing red. (see what I did there?)

They can come at me, I downvote every single hexbear post in the feed regardless of content.

Or just block them.

Yeah, blocked users cannot see or vote on your content.

Are you sure? I thought blocking a user just prevents you from seeing their responses.

You are correct. On some clients, it also blocks you from seeing threads or posts where that user participates, but I believe that is a defect.