• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • Rimu@piefed.socialOP
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • rglullis@communick.news
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          4 months ago

          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.

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              4 months ago
              1. You don’t need to be federated to read people’s activities…
              2. Even if there was some type of “authorized fetch” involved, one could bypass it easily by writing a bot on LW to get the data. Then what?
              • Rimu@piefed.socialOP
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                4 months ago

                Ok, yeah, theoretically.

                But we’re talking about putting voting info into the UI for anyone to see. Not highly motivated and skilled bad actors.

                • rglullis@communick.news
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                  4 months ago

                  And the “we should not make it available for the public at large because it will lead to abuse” is also theoretical.

                  Anyway, I’m already on record saying that I don’t like the voting system and that we should get rid of it altogether. Voting on content used to be about collective curation, not a constant popularity contest.

                  I’m also on record saying that we need to stop relying on systems that only give us the illusion of privacy and depend on the software developers for culture shaping.

                  If making the vote public gets people to be exposed to these fundamental issues of the current design, and leads us to search for better solutions, then I’m all for it.

              • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                4 months ago

                It’s not quite that simple. As far as I’m aware, it’s difficult to fetch from another instance “after the fact” what all the votes are for a particular user or comment; you have to be signed up to receive updates on it, and then after the fact you can go hunting around in your own instance’s DB and see what all the votes were (or your UI can do it, if it’s supported).

                But, yes, there are instance softwares that will do it, and no one’s defederating from every one of those instances (nor I think should they). Someone posted a link to an mbin instance breaking down the votes for this post. Votes are not private.

                • rglullis@communick.news
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                  4 months ago

                  I ran curl "https://mbin.grits.dev/u/mozz/outbox?page=1" -H 'accept: application/activity+json' and I could see your outbox. Apparently mbin does not put Like/Dislike activities in there, only your comments/posts/notes.

                  In a world where ActivityPub is only used in server-to-server, this would be fine. If we ever get to a (IMNSHO, better) scenario where we have more clients talking AP directly, then this will not work, and mbin will have to add those as well.

                  All of this to say:

                  • the debate about “what Lemmy devs are doing” vs “what mbin is doing” vs “what PieFed is doing” should be seen as tremendous conflict with the idea that “The good thing about the Fediverse is that we can all talk with each other, regardless of where we are”.
                  • There is no sane way to square this peg into a round hole. Privacy and “Social Media” are inherently incompatible. The advice about not putting anything online that you are not willing to ever be made public is evergreen, and anyone that does not follow it will eventually have to learn it the hard way.
            • Dandroid@sh.itjust.works
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              4 months ago

              How do you know who you’re defederating with? When I set up my instance, the list of federated instances was thousands. How do you know which one is scraping the data?

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            How is the data public? I’m asking in the most technical sense?

            This informs an issue I’ve had lately with a group of three people or bots following along my comment chain (All my comments, for a while, were dropping consistently to -2 score in all contexts).

            It’s my understanding that votes are not public. Am I wrong?

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              4 months ago

              Every comment/post/vote made in a community is sent as an activity to the community’s subscribers.

            • Adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev
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              4 months ago

              All votes are public, they’re literally broadcast to the Fediverse writ large. You vote on something on your server, your server then tells the server owning the thing you voted on and that server then tells anyone who is interested (subscribers on other servers). That way everyone knows that this comment was voted on, but that information is indelibly tied to you - an entity on the Fediverse.

              Lemmy devs just chose not to a) show that information in a UI (plenty of other software out there does) and b) not inform people that was the case. Which leads to the whole point of the thread, hiding this from users merely gives a false sense of security.

            • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 months ago

              Your world does not correspond to reality given that mbin already shows individual votes.

              Head over to your comment on fedia.io and see who voted on your own comment.

              Do you want to only vote on instances that defederate all mbin instances, and commit to keep doing so in the future?

              • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Just because people can go out of their way to find this information, doesn’t mean we should remove all restrictions. That’s a real twisted way of thinking.

                What we have in place is already egregious imo, and a major flaw with the system in place.

                • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  4 months ago

                  That isn’t really going out of your way, it is the base mode of how the fediverse works. Looking at something on a different instance.
                  Plenty of people just use mbin and see this, without any action at all.
                  The point is that as it stands right now, there are already basically no restrictions. The only thing perhaps missing is the knowledge that you can simply copy paste a link into fedia or another mbin instance to view upvotes.

                  You can open an issue on mbin about it, to restore a semblance of restriction. But currently as it stands, all restrictions are about as fallen as they could be.

                  You can ofc argue that we shouldn’t open another equivalent hole in lemmys webui and api, so that you can in the future remove the ability from mbin.

                  I would in turn argue that this system has always been egregious, and that in the same sense as banning encryption you never hit those you want to hit using incomplete restrictions. Regular users are led to believe their votes are private, while the worst dataminers or trolls will always have their instances to query all of that info.
                  And how could you inform people that their votes are public without at the same time telling them how to get access to that info?

                  If mbin removes the info, you will get another fediverse software showing it. You will get fediverse activity pub log info pages, specific vote info pages, it will never end.
                  Has reddit ever managed to kill the 200ᵗʰ removeddit clone?

                  Please instead put your effort into changing the way lemmy federates, the only way to fix this is to make vote details private, between only a select few instances. An mbin dev in the other thread mentioned PeerTube as an example implementation where you could remove vote details like that.

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              4 months ago

              Yeah, I do my best to avoid cliched references, but this is 100% a “blue pill/red pill” dilemma. The majority of people seem to prefer to live a comfortable lie than face the harsh truth.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          4 months ago

          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.

        • Adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev
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          4 months ago

          You say that, but you simply have to be using something that isn’t Lemmy and that information is there (doubly so if you’re an admin on any of these systems)

          • Rimu@piefed.socialOP
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            4 months ago

            Hmmm I see a bunch of my friends have not upvoted my post. I will contact them to ask why not and ensure that they do.

          • can@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Oof, I’d rather just stick to Lemmy and let people see my votes rather than deal with karma.

            • kux@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              that’s kind of the point, other instances are already aggregating and rating your votes given and received, why shouldn’t lemmy show this to you?

              • can@sh.itjust.works
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                4 months ago

                I liked it being relatively obfuscated. Even though I rarely downvote. But the ones I do are the ones I’d like to avoid. Tbh I’m more ambivalent compared to my thoughts on karma.

          • sramder@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            People who downvote more than upvote tend to be the ones who get in fights a lot and say snarky, inflammatory and negative things.

            Summed up my whole sense of humor in half a throwaway sentence ;-)

            Seriously though, interesting read, thank you kux… you can really feel the author’s frustration and yet I can’t help but feel that they are interested in a certain kind of idealistic online community. Reddit but with a really restrictive HOA where everyone has the exact same color mailbox.

            • kux@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              the author almost certainly has more experience in managing online communities than me (i have none) but it seems counterintuitive to see a dumb take, downvote and bother to leave an argumentative reply rather than just downvote and scroll past. downvotes in this case would defuse potential arguments rather than start them, but i’ll defer to the author and assume that’s not what happens

              • sramder@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                That was my take on it too. The vague sense that you’re just going to end up with nothing but circle-jerks if you implement all these suggestions. I could also just be whooshing an attempt a levity, something obvious to a seasoned community moderator.

                Hopefully my shitty attempts at socratic method rate a bit better then trolling, but I often doubt it :-)

        • Dandroid@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          Admin access means nothing if you can set up your own instance in an afternoon, federate with everything, then get all the votes copied to your database. I have done this just to prove it could be done, btw.

        • index@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          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.

          I’m down to work on an analyzer tool that would make it easier for everyone to see the votes

      • it_depends_man@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I would like a (c) where my instances collects all the votes on the post, and then transmits an anonymized aggregate.

        • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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          4 months ago

          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.

          • socsa@piefed.social
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            4 months ago

            This is not true, the piefed admin implemented pseudonymous voting agents in around 48 hours

            • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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              4 months ago

              Piefed’s experimental mechanism isn’t truly anonymous. For instance I’m pretty sure you’re the downvote from PieFed on my comment.

              You can still figure out who is behind votes by examining the proxy voting actors and their voting patterns. But it’s probably close enough.

              If you wanted to share only an aggregate with other instances, that would require activitypub changes.

                • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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                  But if you use that term, don’t say what I said isn’t true.

                  Interesting that you said you didn’t downvote me and then the downvote from PieFed I saw just before is gone hehe

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        4 months ago

        My votes on piefed are not public. This dev took the obvious idea of a dedicated voting agent and implemented it in about 48 hours.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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      4 months ago

      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.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Mod-admins are already doing this, even if you vote and don’t comment on something.

    • zecg@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s already public, it’s just lemmy users who don’t see them.

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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      4 months ago

      Isn’t the obvious thing to just have it be an option that admins can enable or disable? Maybe have a third option for only showing upvotes? Then it’s up to each instance to decide, and users can decide to go to instances with the option their prefer.

    • Xyre@lemmus.org
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      4 months ago

      What might be interesting would be to have it displayed, but grouped by instance. That way we could see some data and potentially uncover troll instances or attempts to brigade the conversation without opening ourselves up to personal attacks.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      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

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        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

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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      4 months ago

      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

    • Socialist Mormon Satanist@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • Socialist Mormon Satanist@lemmy.world
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          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. :)

  • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • rglullis@communick.news
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      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.

      • shadowbert@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          4 months ago

          If users are the problem and the platform encourages/enables them to behave like that, then the problem is the platform. Redditors act that way because the system incentivizes it.

          • shadowbert@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            What alternatives to votes would you propose to handle this better? Because I have no doubt the same thing will happen here too…

            It’s just how people work, especially when things get heated. That said, perhaps that’s a poor example as a heated discussion isn’t necessary a helpful/constructive one…

            • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              I already said: upvotes only, remove downvotes, votes are public. If we don’t have downvotes public voting is not as important. But if we insist on keeping them, then yes it should be public

              We also need people to be more accepting of stricter/heavier-handed moderation, which is a hard sell.

        • rglullis@communick.news
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          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.

          • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Or some self entitled 3rd party admin would do that just because they’d feel like people owed them explanations.

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              Hey, do I owe you anything for all the space I’m taking in your head or am I still living rent-free?

              • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                If you did it would not be rent free, or would it, einstein. But no worry, i don’t think about you, just this topic and your enthusiasm for it triggered my reply :)

                Have a downvote for going off topic and “personal”.

                • rglullis@communick.news
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                  You are the one pontificating in my comment, and I am the one going personal. Seems like your reasoning is as good as your reading comprehension.

                  But hey, thanks for stopping by!

          • shadowbert@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            But… we had those on reddit. I didn’t see many actual examples of the “moderator gone power crazy” stereotype that is so often echoed there (especially by people who fully deserved the moderator action they received).

            The issue wasn’t that the rules were clear. The issue was that people refused to read them in the first place, and became hyper-defensive and obstinate whenever they were called out on it, even by moderators.

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              4 months ago

              No moderator went on to call out users who were down voting for disagreement, because this data is not public on Reddit.

        • rglullis@communick.news
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          4 months ago

          Meta-moderation and multi-dimensional voting. We were happier with slashdot and we took it for granted.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Same idiots playing games with each others in the open is better than bots and manipulation going on behind the scenes.

        • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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          4 months ago

          Well, there are other problems too of course, but you can check the rest of the thread for that or check my comment history.

      • pop@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Because the fediverse isn’t as big as you think it is and so the number of crazies aren’t a problem yet.

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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          4 months ago

          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.

          • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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            4 months ago

            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.

            I know, it’s an issue, but there are certainly ways to solve it, like having the vote identity split between multiple servers that can still confirm with each other that the vote is valid, but neither would reveal the actual identity to make it traceable back.

            Sounds like those people doing the ostracizing should get moderated if they can’t handle being downvoted.

            That’s unfortunately not how it often works. Small, ostracized and vulnerable groups often get taken advantage of. As an example, imagine I want to make a good faight argument around, say, a political topic like Russia. Or a sensitive topic like paedophilia. Or about abortion or trans rights in a religious subreddit. Chances are I’d get downvoted to oblivion, even if the consensus (at least originally on Reddit) was that downvotes should not be used to simply disagree with someone. But at least I “opt into” that, by putting myself out there, knowing that the comment will be attached to my name.

            But that’s not really the standard with votes, and them being public has a chilling effect, makes it easy to harass people just for (dis)agreeing with something, etc. We should find a way to make votes more private, not less.

            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.

            Yes, the votes are already kinda public, but there’s still at least some barrier to it, and most people either don’t know or care enough.

            • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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              4 months ago

              there are certainly ways to solve it, like having the vote identity split between multiple servers that can still confirm with each other that the vote is valid, but neither would reveal the actual identity to make it traceable back.

              This doesn’t solve it. I can still just make multiple accounts and vote multiple times.

              The only way to solve it would be to actually verify that each account is associated with 1 real life person and then verify that each person only votes once on each post. But that requires essentially verifying a passport and documents for each user which is totally infeasible and has far worse privacy concerns than public votes do.

              • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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                4 months ago

                This doesn’t solve it. I can still just make multiple accounts and vote multiple times.

                I mean yeah, but you could already do that now. The point is to not make it worse, and to not allow malicious instances to vote as if they were other people.

                • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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                  4 months ago

                  I mean yeah, but you could already do that now

                  Yes, but because the votes are not private, I can be found out by correlating votes. Like if I made another account and just used it to always upvote everything my first account posts, that would be pretty obvious. If votes are private, there is no way to find out such conduct.

  • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • Fillicia@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      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.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialOP
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      4 months ago

      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%?

        • Rimu@piefed.socialOP
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          4 months ago

          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.

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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            Mbin and Kbin should be encouraged to change this.

            Who are you to impose how others run their instance? Clearly this should be an option that each instance can set by itself. You are of course free to defederate, but that’s kinda like an instance that has downvotes disabled defederating from instances that have downvotes enabled. You can do it but it’s kind of arbitrary I would say.

    • Lemmeenym@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      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.

  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • Godric@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Boy oh boy, it sure is a mystery why democracies have people vote privately

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    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?

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • boyi@lemmy.sdf.org
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    I would say no. I don’t want some dumbass to interogate me about why I downvotes thia and why I upvoted that.