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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.
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.
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.
Do not make votes public. It will lead to personal attacks.
They're already public if you look via kbin or run your own instance.
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
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.
I think it's a bad idea. It's just going to start harassment and witch hunts when someone gets a downvote they don't like. Stalking is going to be a thing, people are going to aggregate all the votes you've done to make assumptions about you to then bully you. Once public, sources outside Lemmy will start gathering and cross referencing data about you.
In the US, when you vote, the vote is private to protect the person. Making votes public will only empower those that would abuse it. It very well could end Lemmy due to massive bulling, harassment, and the decline of activity.
Boy oh boy, it sure is a mystery why democracies have people vote privately
The last thing I need is people knowing I upvoted a nsfw post, so nope thanks.
Have you SEEN the drama that happens in this place? I feel like this is just asking for weird nobodies to harass anyone who quietly disagrees with them.
If this passes then I'm outta here.
I rather not. If it does happen, I’ll just rss Lemmy and stop using my account. I like Lemmy the way it is because there’s not much focus on votes and more on actual discussion.
I was really confused seeing this post, because I always assumed that Lemmy votes were public. Because how else are instances going to sync them? And indeed, the API exposes them completely, this change will just make it easier.
Then I was really confused when I saw so many comments being against it. A lot of "I'll leave if votes become public" in here. That's a lot of people who somehow assumed Lemmy was private. Aren't we all supposed to be Linux nerds in here?
No thank you. I've already had one person go off on me because of some perceived offense: https://lemm.ee/comment/13768482
Not everyone has a github account and can comment or vote there.
But, agree. Don't think any good will come from making votes public. Any pro/con should be measured against who it benefits. If it's mods or devs, there are always alternatives
If it's end-users, consider the edge-cases and the repercussions of malicious actors having access to those individual preferences.
I'm seeing lots of comments here saying that server admins can already see vote data, and therefore it is not private.
But from my point of view, having a handful of people able to extract voting data using their position of trust on the lemmy network is very different from broadcasting voting data to everyone on lemmy. And although you can argue that it is possible to create a new server and federate and blah-blah-blah to view votes; that argument sounds to me like "don't bother locking your front door, because that type of lock can be defeated by a lock-picking tools."
And even aside from all that discussion about who can access what; there is another key point that I think is overlooked: Making voter information public makes it 'normal' thing to monitor and discuss. Currently there is an expectation that people won't look at or discuss that information (even if they hypothetically could get access). But by making it public, the expectation then is that everyone will look at that information. That would create a change in tone and meaning of votes and discussion around votes.
using their position of trust on the lemmy network
Being a lemmy admin is not a "position of trust" - anyone can fire up a single-person instance for themselves and be a lemmy admin. You can also just view a post on mbin to see votes.
I would hate to have to deal with "why did you downvote me?" comments, but I'm also not sure I would have the self control to abstain from leaving such a comment myself.
I think that making vote identities easily accesible to every user runs the risk of increasing harassment and decreasing discussion quality.
This would probably escalate a lot of arguments that break out in comment sections.
I don't want votes to be public, but they already are, so.
Someone can easily host a website to leak this information and people should know, instead of believing they are private
I’ve already seen admins go through the federated votes on their instance to call out anyone who disagrees with them.
I don’t have a strong opinion either way but I don’t think it will be healthy for discourse to unlock that power for everyone
I would say no. I don't want some dumbass to interogate me about why I downvotes thia and why I upvoted that.
Lemmy is already a privacy nightmare, in some way. There was a comment showing the screengrab of those peiple who upvoted and downvoted a post. Basically, if you self-host an instance, you'll have access to these. This can easily be weaponized by certain organizations that want to create profiling of lemmy users, e.g NSA and Intelligence agencies.
What a horrible fucking idea. You are want this place to be an even bigger echo chamber than it already is? Yes, let's allow the majority of one opinion brigade people's histories to further ostracized them!
Admins, for smart people, can be fucking idiots.
Seems fine? Voting was, at best, only slightly anonymous anyway because other platforms that get the AP action will happily tell you exactly who did what when even if the Lemmy UI doesn't.
And, honestly, if you don't want your fake and nearly anonymous internet name associated with doing something, eh, maybe that's a sign you shouldn't do it?
Absolutely not.
This will like lots of other people say start witch hunts and people will absolutely develop bots and websites which scrape all that information and classify all users based on that. Like those Reddit sites where you can search for a user and see where they are active and all that. But this will be worse.
Probably for the best if downvotes remain less easy to access, at the very least. There's a myth that people who are suicidal will "find a way even if you take away some of the easier methods", which is explicitly false. If you take away the easy option, you are directly reducing the harm that easy option might have caused. https://gizmodo.com/why-have-people-stopped-committing-suicide-with-gas-5959303
If the admins take away the quick and easy option for seeing who downvoted your passionate comment, the mods are directly reducing the number of people who go on rants about downvotes and targeted vitriol.
It has nothing to do with privacy; this is a public forum that by it's very nature, requires that all activity be easily available to all the sites you federate with. There is not privacy in that.
This is about the type of community that forms around the software. Do we want to encourage, and make easily available, the list of people who disagree with you? Or do we want to to put minor barriers around that to help keep the number of people who do that low?
Hard no. I'll move on like I did a year ago from Reddit, and I was on that site for 14 years.
Just from a political/nation-state viewpoint, it would needlessly expose information to make it easier for countries and political parties to keep some kind of "social score" and decide when to do something to you. China already does this kind of stuff.
We need to make it easier for everyone/anyone to do this? Think about all of the super-divisive issues at hand. People can already get a sense of your views from your responses, and that should be it.
I say no. Privacy.
Comments say they're already basically public. I don't know anything about that, but it's probably better to merely have a camera in your toilet than have a camera in your toilet that livestreams 24/7.
But I don't have an especially informed sense of how to run a platform so maybe there's a bunch of crap I'm not thinking about.
No, as it would create a lot of excuses for targeted harrassment and just increase toxicity
I don't see the benefits but I see drama this would cause.
So the annoying neckbeard i downvoted for being an annoying neckbeard is gonna DM me?
VOTES ARE ALREADY PUBLIC.
If you are using Lemmy because you want privacy, you've already missed the boat, everything is wide assed open for datamining and advertising fingerprinting.
I'd hoped for an open system with open APIs and open implementations that allow everyone equal access to the system and bring equal accountability.
If people just want Reddit style fiefdoms with no real public accountability possible, then make a blackjack and hookers fork.
I'm really not interested in a system that bakes in more authoritarian secrecy and control, which could very well be an unexpected outcome of backlash to how this has been presented.
Many people in this thread seem to not realize that votes are essentially public already - this is only about whether the Lemmy UI should make it a bit easier to see the votes. They can already be seen quite easily if you know how.
However, there is an easy solution to this problem. This is clearly a controversial decision, so don't make a choice for everyone. Make it an option. Any admin can decide for themselves whether their instance should allow users to see votes.
That also means that users can decide to go to instances where the votes are hidden or public.
This approach leaves the choice to the individual, rather than forcing the choice on everyone.