Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
Hard no from me
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit. We all know those fuckos are out there
Voting on Reddit-like platforms is soft moderation by a community, and if you disincentive that, the whole model kinda falls apart IMO
Your votes are already public. It’s a matter of (a) do we want to make it slightly easier for the people who aren’t technically inclined to see them too (b) do we want people acting with the awareness that they’re public.
(a) doesn’t have a clear answer to me. The answer to (b), though, is clearly yes.
Your votes are already public.
People say this all the time, but it’s not really the case.
I don’t think privacy is a binary thing that one either has or does not - there are degrees of privacy. Currently what we have is mostly private, requiring either technical skill or admin access to circumvent. This is a pretty high bar which 99% of people would not be able to reach. You’re proposing removing the bar entirely because it is not high enough.
requiring either technical skill or admin access to circumvent.
What if some troll sets up a website that indexes/publishes this data? What technical skill would be required then?
The data is public and ignorance is not bliss. People need to be made aware of this. If this will lead to people being more careful about what they post online or how they interact with a public social media service, then all the better.
You’re proposing removing the bar entirely because it is not high enough.
Incorrect. I said that I see no obvious answer as to whether to remove the bar – that’s the (a) part. What I’m proposing to do is definitely to educate people about the existence of the bar and the fact that they shouldn’t be voting on porn, or contentious political topics from an account with their real name, or etc etc like that.
More than 1% of the currently active Lemmy users are actively running a server (it’s 1.4%, 649 active instances out of 45k MAU), so I think the number is definitely less than 99% of people who wouldn’t know how to do it in the first place (or find an mbin or Friendica server or etc).
The broader point about it being fairly difficult / fairly rare to have the knowledge, I can agree with, but I wasn’t saying necessarily that we should make it easier for the 98.6% of people to do; just that everyone should be aware that it’s possible so they can make their voting decisions with that knowledge in mind.
People say this all the time, but it’s not really the case.
Except that it is, people with the skills already bridged that gap for everyone.
https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/267356/Lemmy-devs-are-considering-making-all-votes-public-have-your/favourites
piefed is already extremely redditty maintaining behind-the-scenes ‘karma’ and ‘attitude’ for users whether they signed up for it or not. why shouldn’t this info be public instead of in the hands of admins only?
https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
I would like a (c) where my instances collects all the votes on the post, and then transmits an anonymized aggregate.
That would require a major change to the ActivityPub standard, which is not easy or trivial. This is at worst infeasible to impossible, at best something that is 5+ years away.
I agree with you. I remember arguing about this a year ago when people first discovered votes were public on Kbin. I don’t want to obsess over who up- or downvoted me and I don’t want anyone else doing that either. Discussions are healthier when voting is anonymous (or at least obscured as is currently the case).
If bots become such an overwhelming problem that all regular users need access to voting records to better report all the bots I’ll maybe revisit my stance. But right now the gains seem dubious.
If they’re a serial downvoter, then it’s easier for you to track them and block them as well. Double edged sword i think
I thought blocks were one way - you can’t see anything from the person you blocked, but they can still see your stuff?
So to catch a single “serial downvoter” you’d open up all your voting to vote stalkers? If it’s a single person, honestly why does it matter?
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit.
They can read your comment history why would you care about them being able to see what you upvoted?
Voting on Reddit-like platforms is soft moderation by a community, and if you disincentive that,
How does that disincentive it? It actually makes it better
I specifically don’t comment on people that give off the vibe they might be one of those kind of nutjobs, precisely because it gives them a notification with my username attached if I do. I’m on this site to kill some time with low effort, I want to minimise the risk of attracting the attention of some weirdo.
I downvote in those scenarios and then report if appropriate. If enough other users feel the same way the comment goes down to the bottom of the thread and fewer users see it. Especially if it’s something that a mod eventually removes, as it reduces the reach until a mod can get to it.
If I risk retaliation for doing that, I (and others) will just stop, meaning those comments stay up front & centre and we lose that soft moderation plus that engagement in general. Going into the comments will just end up being a worse experience
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit. We all know those fuckos are out there
I’m dealing with one right now! lol It’s crazy.
You don’t even have serial downvoters. You have a few comments without many downvotes. You just consistently post the worst possible political pisstakes repeatedly and constantly and nobody likes them when they run across it every time.
You just consistently post the worst possible political pisstakes repeatedly
Strange that you would say that. I haven’t posted any political articles to this community. This is the fediverse community.
nobody likes them when they run across it every time.
Really? So an article about a ninety year old woman, who finally graduates college, posted to my own sub, with 3 subscribers, and got 9 votes within a minute of posting is political? That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
Or 13 downvotes in my own educational sub about a college that gives out 3-year degrees. It has 2 subscribers in that sub. That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
Or 14 downvotes about a program serving underprivileged children and helping them go to college. and the downvotes were within 2 minutes of posting. To a sub that has 2 subscribers. That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
And since all my postings to a political sub are about third parties, from legit news orgs, seems kind of a stretch to call them “political pisstakes.”
But wait, I haven’t posted any of those articles to this community. So strange how you would know so much about what I post.
Of course, posting history is public. But I haven’t checked your post history, because I don’t care. Strange that you would check mine. And then not mention all of the non-political posts.
You know, what’s really weird too? I posted some articles to the c/science committee. And even some posters there commented on how strange it was that my posts were being downvoted so much and so fast, when the articles weren’t political at all.
Luckily the science people are cool, and the upvotes quickly outnumbered the downvotes.
But yeah, they were definitely curious about why so many downvotes so quickly on neutral science reporting.
But meh, probably just a coincidence.
I think maybe you are right. Because for sure there wouldn’t be an incel loser, who is so butthurt about my not voting for his candidate, that he’d follow me around. And downvote articles and take screenshots of how much I post, or set up alternate accounts just to engage with me after I blocked him.
That’s way too strange. There is no way a loser would be so pathetic to do that. All because he doesn’t like the Green Party.
So now that I’ve thought about it, I agree with you.
It would be just too crazy that an incel loser like that would follow me around. I mean, sure he can’t get a girlfriend, but hey, I’m sure he’s not THAT mad at the world. :)
No, votes should not be displayed public.
Blocking those who downvote creates further polarisation, echo chambers and an environment more hostile to discussion and honest exchange.
Following those who upvote creates personality cults and nepotism and devalues the content.
environment more hostile to discussion and honest exchange.
“Voting” and “discussion” are separate things. The old forums did not have voting but still had polarization, personal attacks, hellthreads, etc.
The problem is that Reddit/Facebook turned “voting” from a tool meant to measure “quality” (e.g, this post is relevant to the community, this comment does not add to the discussion) into a tool to measure “popularity” (I agree with this, so I vote up. I don’t like this, so I downvote).
Either get rid of voting altogether, or let’s bring back a culture where “votes” are meant to signal quality.
Redditors did that, rather than reddit I’d argue. Still the same result of becoming a far less useful heuristic though.
Not really sure how to “fix” a system like that, which depends on the masses to do something correctly. They… don’t.
We can fix that by having moderators that can establish clear guidelines and show enough authority and can be trusted by the community. And yes, if the guidelines include something like:
Downvotes are not for disagreement. It’s fine to downvote if the argument is false or deliberately misleading, but if someone is making a good faith argument that you disagree with, either make a constructive response or simply let it go
Then the mods would be completely justified to call out users who are drive-by downvoting.
Maybe the upvotes should only be available to the person who owns the comment or post. Maybe to the mods and admins, too?
Do not make votes public. It will lead to personal attacks.
It leads to an even bigger echo chamber, people with unpopular opinions will get ostracized not just for their comments, but even for their voting. There’s a reason why any real democracy has secret votes.
Comparing to democracy doesn’t make sense, as democracy has mechanisms to ensure 1 person = 1 vote. The internet has no such mechanism. If we did, I’d be all for private voting.
people with unpopular opinions will get ostracized not just for their comments, but even for their voting
Sounds like those people doing the ostracizing should get moderated if they can’t handle being downvoted. Besides, if a dickhead wants to see the votes today, they can find them - votes are public, Lemmy just doesn’t display them in the UI.
I think people misunderstand. I too would prefer privacy, but theres a big BUT.
Due to how the federation works, anyone who is tech savvy enough can already see votes. One way is to run an instance.
This change doesn’t lower privacy, it aligns expectations with reality. A false sense of privacy, which people obviously show here in the comments, is way more dangerous.
It should be noted that anyone can set up a Lemmy server and track votes already. For instance, for this post, I see this screen:
This is available for both comments and posts. The database itself contains even more details, such as time and date of when the server broadcast the vote (which is often immediately or a few seconds later).
It’s not as easy to do for trolls to set up a server, but comments, posts, favourites, votes, edits, and deletions should be considered public when it comes to most fediverse protocols, unless the server does not federate (like truth.social) or only federates with a few select servers. It’s trivial to edit software like Lemmy to keep every edit or undone vote, and there’s nothing your server admins will notice.
No need for a Lemmy server, kbin/mbin put it in their interface
https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/267356/Lemmy-devs-are-considering-making-all-votes-public-have-your/favourites
Saying the fediverse is good for privacy is just plain false, that’s the kind of information anyone can acquire, even an ad company. All they have to do is federate a silent instance and see all you do.
anyone can set up a Lemmy server
This is not the case. What percentage of the population could set up a Lemmy server, do you think? 1%? 0.1%? Of those, what percentage have the time to set up a Lemmy server? 1%?
As I’ve learned from this thread, it’s actually easier: copy the link to a post or comment into the search bar of any connected mbin instance and you can see all downvotes. If you can find a kbin instance that’s still up, you can also see the downvotes.
Yes I know. Mbin and Kbin should be encouraged to change this. We’re currently in a fairly benign environment so it doesn’t really matter but if the threadiverse ever got big then this could become serious enough to be a cause for defederation.
That’s way too much work. I just logged into my original account on kbin.social and tapped on the activity button to see votes before that instance went down. If I want to see votes again I can set up an account on any kbin or mbin instance in less than a minute and do the same thing.
