Actually unpopular opinion: it’s a better experience when you can see vote counts. Not only that, but when you are able to see exactly who is upvoting and downvoting because then you can vet for bad faith actors fucking with the vote counts - which is particularly useful when looking at political content.
edit: obscuring vote counts on the Fediverse reminds me a lot of when Reddit initially started to “fuzz” their vote counts sometime around 2016 (maybe even earlier). The decision was made with the somewhat ambiguous explanation of “it will help combat spam” but it was just one of many small choices they made that started their downward slide. Similarly, in the Fediverse, obscuring votes and vote counts is probably made with good intentions, but I only see it as the start of a bad thing.
Actually unpopular opinion: it’s a better experience when you can see vote counts. Not only that, but when you are able to see exactly who is upvoting and downvoting because then you can vet for bad faith actors fucking with the vote counts - which is particularly useful when looking at political content.
edit: obscuring vote counts on the Fediverse reminds me a lot of when Reddit initially started to “fuzz” their vote counts sometime around 2016 (maybe even earlier). The decision was made with the somewhat ambiguous explanation of “it will help combat spam” but it was just one of many small choices they made that started their downward slide. Similarly, in the Fediverse, obscuring votes and vote counts is probably made with good intentions, but I only see it as the start of a bad thing.