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.
Keep the Fediverse bot- and troll-free.
The whole idea of being able to behave like a shithead without accountability needs to go.
I think votes shouldn’t be anonymous. Transparency is important to weed out trolls and bots. And public votes should be made easier accessible to every user not only admins/mods.
On Kbin the votes are 100% public for anyone. I’ve migrated to Lemmy after the frequent server issues with Kbin and I miss that part dearly. It was very easy to gauge whether someone was engaging in a good or bad faith discussion by checking the votes within a discussion. That being said, personally I’m very light on my downvotes, and I can see how someone more trigger-happy would see it as worrying. Personally I see the vote transparency as healthy though.
To be fair, there’s a point to be made that someone who’s overly trigger-happy on dislike should be shamed for it. Just like you would be if you kept being snide to everyone in real life.
I agree that transparency would do much more good than harm, plus compared to the info that people already put in their profiles/comments, it’s not likely to make them anymore identifiable.
I’d even argue public votes can deescalate some situations, for example where both sides of a relatively heated discussion can see they vote each other up. They don’t necessarily agree but they appreciate the other side’s points.
As for the transparency, it’s not possible to list all the votes of a user, one rather needs to list votes on a given post. To profile a given user the attacker would need to cross-reference the data from all posts and comments which is computationally infeasible, both client-side and server-side.
The point of privacy is pretty shaky in this context, tbh. Anybody using the fediverse is ensured pseudonymity already, the privacy issue should be whether your account(s) can be linked to your real life identity against your will.
In that regard I can only see positives to making voting public. Foremost it could create some accountability to the system, and maybe minimise the lazier drive-by, doom scroll votes?
And now I definitely want to see whoever downvoted your post outed as cowards 👍👍
I completely agree with the idea of more accountability. We are real people in acting public right here, we should be constantly aware that our actions have consequences. If you don’t want your pseudonym associated with a vote, don’t do it. It’s kinda like the opposite of 4chan, where instand of anonymous controversial content on top, here we have human-curated content being pushed up.
Couldn’t agree more, and if we passed around imaginary gold on Lemmy, I’d give you a dubloon for this.
The problem with every system is it will eventually be broken down by someone smarter and used to manipulate the user-base that grew to trust its safety to market something. Be it ideas or products, the only true safety net we have is a choice in the decision. The second a choice is forced, is the second groups split away. Each user at least deserves the safety of choice if we expect them to trust in any larger system. Decisions being made by a smaller group of individuals for the larger whole, doesn’t exactly have the best history if we look at the world around us. Don’t get me wrong… Trust would be great, but we have to trust that going from one extreme to another will inevitably create a another new problem.
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.
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.
