Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
Problem is, it actually encourages a hive mind. I’ve already had 2 people try to bully me.
Then tell those people to get fucked.
I’d go one step further. Upvotes down votes and totals should be hidden entirely.
Unless you have an actual implementation of how that would work, telling us “what you’d do” is just a fantasy. You can’t “hide” things from federation – they’re either included, removed or made inconvenient to access.
Does “posting without external influence” even have any value besides sounding cool? The entire concept of Lemmy and Reddit is that external influence floats and sinks content. If you want unranked, anonymous content, you want 4chan (which is of course riddled with extremists and good content is almost entirely drowned out with worthless shitposts).
Personally, I’d rather that “external influence” was as fair and open and accountable as possible, rather than “I wonder if 500 of those votes are just Russian bots”.
My implementation would be hide it from the UI by default for instances
Also, never said unranked… I meant simply hide the rankings. Part of the disadvantage of showing the totals on the UI means that high upvotes make it seem like it was highly popular. It also means that people don’t mindlessly upvote posts simply because there were a lot of upvotes. By hiding them, you know its popular, but no how popular. It changes the way people interact so it’s more normal.
Showing Upvotes/downvotes doesn’t show whether they are bots are not. It just means they’ll upvote/downvote more random shit and mess around wit the rest of the posts, so more crap rises to the top because they’re interfering with the rankings.
There are easier ways to identify bots… And, it just aids abusive people. I don’t think it will assist with bots at all… Sorry.
Also, never said unranked… I meant simply hide the rankings
Sounds trash to me. Fortunately it would be trivial for me to add them back in because again, all you’re doing is making the information inconvenient.
It also means that people don’t mindlessly upvote posts simply because there were a lot of upvotes
Is that how your mind works? I’ve never once done this and I’m extremely skeptical that anyone does. Sounds to me like you don’t like the content and have decided that nobody really does, they’re just upvoting it because it was upvoted.
Showing Upvotes/downvotes doesn’t show whether they are bots are not. It just means they’ll upvote/downvote more random shit and mess around wit the rest of the posts, so more crap rises to the top because they’re interfering with the rankings.
A log of votes is the data you need to discover bots. It doesn’t magically reveal them, nor did I claim it would.
Voting on random shit might make a slightly more plausible voting log for a bot but that’s going to be far more obvious than you think, won’t actually interfere with the rankings if it’s truly random and once again, not having rankings shown doesn’t address this problem either.
Votes and rankings are always knowable, even if you hide them from the UI. If there is a pressure to make bots plausible through random voting, that pressure exists regardless of it being shown on the default UI. All you’re doing is misleading users about what information they’re exposing.
There are easier ways to identify bots
Describe them.
And, it just aids abusive people
You’ve already claimed to be a victim of them and your solution does nothing to address it. You’re just adding another value to the list of poorly obscured information, because it’s what you personally want.
Yes, bias is a thing. Ever hear of the placebo effect? It gives people a bias before clicking the link.
In fact, showing rankings actually makes it easier for bots because of that bias, they just randomly click stuff to appear neutral, and upvote their target posts, which when they say +1.4k, you’ll be biased into thinking it’s a popular opinion. Hence why hiding them by default actually maybe has benefits. There are no advantages to seeing the votes other than abuse. Name some.
As you said, they’re already accessible, so there is no point of bloating the code. Let’s not make them even more so and encourage abuse.
What problem is being solved here by doing this?
