Lemmy devs are considering making all votes public - have your say
Rimu@piefed.social to 
github.com
Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
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Rimu@piefed.social to Rimu@piefed.social to Rimu@piefed.social to Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
Yes. The act of voting a comment up or down shouldn't be much different to hitting reply to that comment.
Upvote/downvote systems do exist to overcome those "+1" "-1" posts on old forums. You are not voting for the legislative elections. You are just interacting with another person comment/post in a way that does not require writing. If post comments, are not anonymous, upvotes/downvotes shouldn't be anonymous as well.
What happens when foreign actors intent on influencing public policy decide to harass everyone critical of their issue? People will just stop being critical of the foreign narrative to stop the harassment, and you'll wind up with posts that are completely against the public interest and for the foreign narrative.
You can already see this effect to some degree in comments, it'll only get worse if everything is made public in the UI.
As counterintuitive as it is, regulated secrecy is necessary in all democratic processes, and I would argue that includes online forum debates.
It would actually be nice if community mods had the capability to turn the community to anonymous for comments and posts as well. Is knowing who posts the information more important than the information itself? If it's worthwhile to share from one person, it's worthwhile to share from everyone else so identity isn't all that important.