I’ve created this post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/8898162
And some admin showed they can see how the upvotes\downvotes go.
If you are concerned about privacy, you should know, that this data on Lemmy can be easily mined and tracked.
Well, not only this data, all activity on lemmy is public since it needs to be federated (sent to all instances subscribed to the community will receive all activity).
Which means any person can track anyone if they subscribe to the same communities the user’s instance has.
AFAIK the only activity not sent is saved content, and downvotes from content hosted in instances which disabled them.
EDIT: for more example, here’s my upvote to this post
"actor":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/u/pe1uca","object":"https://sh.itjust.works/post/8931097","type":"Like","id":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/activities/like/f6b0cced-4e1c-41d7-bf11-349b680c4d84","audience":"https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides"
And here’s the original comment
actor":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/u/pe1uca","to":["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"],"object":{"type":"Note","id":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/comment/1434121","attributedTo":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/u/pe1uca","to":["https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"],"cc":["https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides","https://sh.itjust.works/u/andrew_bidlaw"],"content":"","mediaType":"text/markdown"},"published":"2023-11-11T04:07:31.962497+00:00","tag":[{"href":"https://sh.itjust.works/u/andrew_bidlaw","name":"@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works","type":"Mention"}],"distinguished":false,"language":{"identifier":"en","name":"English"},"audience":"https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides"},"cc":["https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides","https://sh.itjust.works/u/andrew_bidlaw"],"tag":[{"href":"https://sh.itjust.works/u/andrew_bidlaw","name":"@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works","type":"Mention"}],"type":"Create","id":"https://lemmy.pe1uca.dev/activities/create/7a1c726e-0191-4a71-8980-a565727ac52d","audience":"https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides"
And all instances which are subscribed to this community need to receive this information to keep it updated.
All federated data (thus public) should be easily available to the end user. Otherwise we create a false sense of security.
I assumed as much seeing as it’s a public site ran by many different entities.
Similarly, I think Google can read my gmails.
In order to read gmails, you have to work at google.
In order to read the upvotes on this post, all you have to do is spin up your own lemmy instance. Anyone with technical knowledge can do it. The problem is a bit different. I could do it, if I was motivated.
If lemmy gets popular enough, there will be 3rd party sites with search bars and nice UIs and graphs to help you see how someone votes.
Not sure what the solution is. Maybe if we can’t make votes private, they should be fully public.
I don’t understand the concern though. I always assumed my votes, comments, or even PMs here were readable by at least the admins of the instance I’m a member of. The fact that votes and comments are public doesn’t seem to matter from a security or privacy standpoint.
There was an era of reddit where some nerds used addons to tag users for their own personal notes. Nothing wrong with making your own tags for people, imo.
But I do remember there were extensions for “mass tagging”. You could install browser extensions to label people based on their post history. Someone would run a script, aggregate data, put little tags on people based on how they post. Like, maybe you would install a tagger to label people who don’t agree with you politically, based on someone’s aggregated data.
I never personally liked the mass tagging stuff. It felt toxic to put people you don’t know in boxes. But, I never felt like it should be prevented. At the end of the day if you post something publicly, you shouldn’t be surprised when people respond to that.
But, some people here might not realize how public their vote history is. Not sure anyone wants weird graphs about how they vote. I upvote a lot of stuff, I’m sure a lot of people upvote stuff they don’t totally agree with. Maybe I’m imagining a problem where there isn’t one. I’ve just seen how weird people get when it’s easy to put people in boxes.
I can already see all upvotes and downvotes on mbin(kbin fork) so it’s not really that private
There are all upvotes of your post for example - https://fedia.io/m/privacyguides@lemmy.one/t/395044/If-you-can-create-a-Lemmy-instance-and-federate-you/favourites
Oh, I remember seeing this a while back on the lemmy threads, thanks for the reminder!
Burner accounts for all! You get a burner and you get a burner and you as well!
Haha. If all of us would do so, we’d sure up this usercount to combat Meta’s Threads and dying Twitter.
From when I was asking about it, I think it’s only the instance admins that can see the details. It would be nice to have this information clearly outlined somewhere, so people know and aren’t surprised.
Maybe a table like
What can each person see
Lemmy
| Other users | Community Moderators | Instance Admins |
|---|---|---|
| info A1 | info B1 | info C1 (all) |
| info A2 | info B2 | info C2 (home instance) |
| info A3 | info B3 | info C3 (community’s instance) |
| Other users | Community Moderators | Instance Admins |
|---|---|---|
| info A1 | info B1 | info C1 (all) |
| info A2 | info B2 | info C2 (all) |
| info A3 | info B3 | info C3 (all) |
| info A4 | info B4 | info C4 (all) |
Anyone can see any upvote from federated users via kbin – for example, the upvotes on the comment this is a reply to can be seen here: https://kbin.social/m/privacyguides@lemmy.one/t/616970/If-you-can-create-a-Lemmy-instance-and-federate-you/comment/3491191/favourites
That may not be complete or consistent though given the way federation works.
Downvotes from lemmy do not show up. (Not sure why not; haven’t dug into it.) Only downvotes from kbin members are shown on kbin. Also unclear to me if downvotes between different kbin/mbin instances show up or if it’s the local instance only. (I’ve only noticed local downvotes, but haven’t really been looking.)
Yeah, I had a mixed reaction to finding that out a while ago, but I’m kind of just rolling with it for now. Votes are just simply NOT private on here, for better or worse. My feeling right now is that it’s sort of positive from a community feel perspective, but I’m also avoiding interacting with a lot of subjects I consider more controversial.
Probably we’ll end up developing a culture of either lots of alts used simultaneously, short lived accounts with regular name changes, or both as people become more aware of this. Either that or people will just say “Fuck it. You really want to see all the weird porn I like and my political preferences and what not? Don’t blame me if you regret looking!” :p
The table rendering does not work, at least for me on mobile (jerboa android)
Connect app makes it work. Some are slow to implement the uniformal markdown.
I think the table should be off site on a guide website
As for the rendering, which app are you using? I’ve found that too (Boost misses most rendering for me)
Jerboa.
i have seen tables with this app in other communitites therefore I thought its a typo.
