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Lemmy devs are considering making all votes public - have your say (github.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Please be aware that votes are effectively already public, just not shown in the Lemmy UI.

[–] DumbAceDragon 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I was unaware of that. I thought it was only accessible to instance admins, and I think that's how it should be.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

In Lemmy, only admins and mods can see votes. But most other ActivityPub implementations show votes freely and there's nothing in the protocol that makes votes private. Votes are inherently public - they are only hidden behind a curtain that is very easy to get around in Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, this starts to get moot if no one is aware doesn't it. You might dismiss the design as merely artificial obscurity, but if no one is pulling up the data, then the obscurity is working. The "curtain" you cite isn't trivial for the vast majority of users, which is what this is all about. Starting an instance and extracting the desirable data is a pretty tall hurdle where just the effort alone is prohibitive and enough to give someone a chance to calm down.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You don't need to start a whole instance to find votes, you just need a user on any of the services that show votes publicly.

Also, if someone is getting angry about downvotes in a bad way, moderators should just step in. People should learn that votes is just part of the system and accept them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

you just need a user on any of the services that show votes publicly.

Well if that sort of thing started happening, I think it’d be reasonable to have that person blocked, banned or defederated.

IMO, What’s possible doesn’t need to dictate what’s easy and common, especially when there are always balances and countermeasures previously involved.

[–] DumbAceDragon 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I forgot other fediverse platforms interact with this place. So upvotes translate to likes on mastodon and other platforms? I still feel like this should be anonymized, but I also get how that could be exploited since likes aren't auditable in that case.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Yes, upvotes are in fact just a Like object in ActivityPub and downvotes is a Dislike object. This translates to various other concepts in other ActvityPub apps, depending on what they choose to call it or how they handle them.

I still feel like this should be anonymized

There is no mechanism for doing this in ActivityPub at the moment. Also, you may not want that because it would then also be hidden from admins and mods, who would then be powerless to discover vote manipulation or downvote brigading and other nasty behavior. Having the votes be transparent is probably better as it allows people to discover this kind of behavior much more easily.