Currently, almost anyone in the Fediverse can see Lemmys votes. Lemmy admins can see votes, as well as mods. Only regular Lemmy users can’t. Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?
There is a discussion going on right now considering “making the Lemmy votes public” but I think that premisse is just wrong. The votes are public already, they’re just hidden from Lemmy users. Anyone from a kbin/mbin/fedia instance can check out the votes if they are so inclined.
The users right now may fall into a false sense of privacy when voting because the votes are hidden from Lemmy users. If you want to vote something and not show up on the vote list, please create another account to support that type of content and don’t tell anyone.
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Wait a minute, so any admin can see which posts do I upvote/downvote?
I’m an instance owner and mod. I’ll describe what we see.
Like anyone else, I can check a post or comment and see the upvote and downvote counts. If I click on a specific menu item by a post or comment I can also see who voted which way.
I check it often and to date have only banned two users, out of thousands, who were consistently downvoting posts. These bot accounts were literally voting within seconds of the post going federated.
It’s a useful feature on my end and I think others should be able to see it.
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No, it would encourage irresponsibility which already seems a major issue with lemmy.
if I leave it there. It’s because it’s not foul enough to warrant a ban but I don’t want to press a little green check box explicitly endorsing its existence. I have been here the whole time :/ Yal couped me
Everyone’s fleshed out a lot of the discussions so I’ll just bullet point my opinion to try to better explain the discourse I’m seeing on here
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I view “Lemmy” like it’s a Community Center with group discussions, Community gatherings, and/or lectures with public comments. If you’re in the crowd “Booing” (downvoting) without standing up and making your position clear, you’re not adding anything to the discussion.
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Downvote/Upvote is not like “Booth Voting” at all. You have ONE vote in a democracy, that’s the core principle. You don’t vote Yes for a candidate then vote No for another. You don’t see a ticker above the booth tallying everyone’s vote that was before you (voter manipulation, why hidden scores became a thing).
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I think this would go over a lot better if mods had the choice of how to present the votes. Opt in or out of showing voters, opt in or out of showing scores or eliminating downvotes or even upvotes if you want. Give the power to the community and create useful tools for mods to try out.
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Wouldn’t it be easier to leave it as an option for each user on Lemmy?
If users want anonymity, let them have it. If they want to share their vote, let them do that. Forcing one option on others without the voice of the usually silent majority isn’t going to fix anything, it’s just going to scare some people away or start posts requesting it private again; or optional.
Not to mention, using this method you will quickly see how many users really wanted this option based on how many leave privacy enabled or disabled, instead of listening to a current vocal minority.
User choice would be best indeed. The problem is that currently the votes are public but hidden from Lemmy regular users. Anonymize votes seems to be such a big problem the devs don’t even want to consider it.
I hear you, but problem or not, the devs shouldn’t be making major decisions for the user base after the fact. Anonymous voting might be a problem at first, but so will people who are broadsided by the decision. Not to mention the users who will use an open voting system to bully users they disagree with. You have to foresee problems will come with any decision, and a percentage of users will flee for each bad, meaning the safest choice is user base safety over forced decisions. Ultimately sad truth is, leaving things as they are is a much easier call for devs.
If I vote something I’m expressing my opinion just like I would with comment, and those are not anonymous.
I get that people are worried about griefers and psychos, but anonymity is just a (poor) cure for the symptoms, not for the disease; users who don’t behave should be banned, and if their instance turns out to be a detriment to the community, they should be defederated.The anonymity we should ensure is the one of the person behind the username, to avoid doxxing and cyber-bullying.
No I’m worried about powertripping mods… That’s the issue.
Why is this so universal?
Because too many mods are power tripping assholes and I say that as someone whose been a mod in various corners of the Internet since at least 2000.
The best mods, and admins, are nearly invisible and as close to drama free as possible.
I am Palestinian and I just got banned from world news ml for saying that some Israeli hostages experienced rape/sexual assault/abuse without “credible evidence”. Somehow the mod equated this with me not giving a fuck about Palestinian prisoners of war.
No my man… I was raped myself as a teen. So to me, all rapes are equal no matter who does it to whom.
Its best if the rules are the same for anyone, but public votes is something power hungry mods will eventually abuse. If you dare upvote the wrong post you will get banned.
All it will take is for folks to look and see you voted in something and they won’t see the context or will misunderstand your intentions and they’ll ban you. This shit happened back on Reddit too and it sucked. They’d blanket ban people who interacted in a community without looking at what you actually did.
It sounds like everyone but mods should be able to see voters. But of course they will use straw accounts. What if only votes on your own post/comment were revealed to you? Like some pointed out, they are already not anonymous to anyone who wants to try hard enough to get the data because of federation. So the question is who do we want to be able to see that data easily? It’s a GUI modification in any case. Who are we making the gui modification for?
Sounds like mods and admins can already do this, and if the barrier to entry to being an admin is firing up a Docker container, I don’t see the purpose in restricting users from seeing it
I typically operate under the assumption that basically anything I decide to post on a public forum is not private.
Call me crazy, but I care less about the instance admins being able to see my vote history than regular users. For me the latter will produce a chilling effect on how I operate with the site moreso than the former, even if admins have more power that can be abused. I was already aware of the votes not actually being public and the idea admins could see that info seemed to be a given, but I still think there’s a difference between having a motivated malicious user go out of their way to look (making an instance, looking on a different platform, etc) vs making it simple for lay users to see that info within the platform itself (which I what I think is under discussion, currently).
And honestly, if a solution could be determined to help make votes anonymous but still allow admins/mods to deal with bots/trolls, then I’d be all for it.
For me the latter will produce a chilling effect on how I operate with the site
Why?
Because if lay users can see how I vote within the app, then I might start being harassed by people for daring to downvote them or daring to upvote someone. And may stay tracking my voting habits.
In which case, I’d probably stop voting.
Having a barrier to that info is better than no barrier even if it’s not impossible, imo.
There is enough drama as it is. This will just open the door to shadowbanning and stalking and other horrors we have escaped by leaving reddit. It’s enough that it’s party available on kbin.
