this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
3421 points (96.1% liked)

You Should Know

33190 readers
48 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...

What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'mma be honest, this might be the worst part of lemmy. NSFW, gray area topics, sports discussion, all that becomes completely radioactive.

[–] fleacircus@lemmy.fmhy.ml 40 points 1 year ago

I think its a massive improvement. Reddit did next to nothing about astro-turfing and vote manipulation. Lemmy gives people the tools needed to detect inorganic content.

[–] EarlTurlet@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

People might have to stand behind their opinions if they choose to voice them. The horror!

(Although the user/account is still basically anonymous 🤷‍♂️)

[–] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's a reason nobody has to publicly announce who their voting for in democratic countries, and that there's no mechanism to check that. People can be grouped, ostracized, persecuted, canceled, or worse.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

Not all votes are private in this way, and we're not exactly voting for a new prime minister / president.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You don't publicly announce it, but the government still knows it's you who voted. Except in this case the site is open source. Knowing who voted is the only way to prevent vote manipulation.

[–] bitbybit@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the US, all elections are done by secret ballot. The govt can see that you voted, but not who you voted for

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, yea, that does make sense. I was thinking of electronic votes, in which case there wasn't much stopping them from storing that data. But you can get a paper ballet where your name isn't on it. Regardless, actual voting isn't a good analogy. You can change your vote on an internet forum, you cannot with a ballet.

Let's say on lemmy, up or down vote, it reported "Bazoogle has voted" and simply adds a number to the variable without my name tied to it. If I wanted to undo my vote, it wouldn't know whether to subtract an up vote or down vote unless it knew which one I did in the first place. The only other option would be to try and encrypt the username with some sort of identifier that can't easily be decrypted. Which might be possible, but is beyond my current knowledge of cybersecurity.

[–] sauerkraus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s as simple as sharing vote counts but not individual identifiers between instances. Problem solved.

A user doesn’t even have to comment to be doxxed by publicly viewable upvotes. They upvote a post in a community for their local state, then upvote a post about how to get an abortion. The state subpoenas the instance admin and gets their IP and email address.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They could already do that with Reddit. Is that something that happens?

[–] sauerkraus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With Reddit that data could be kept between the users and admins.

I do not have any insider knowledge regarding whether Reddit has received requests for user data.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You were saying in the example of the government requesting the data. That's not any different for reddit or Lemmy. If anything, it would be harder to get from Lemmy since it's decentralized. And reddit is known to comply with government warrants.

[–] sauerkraus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

A warrant is still more secure than public access.

[–] ilikekeyboards@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Uhm the government knows it's you who voted but not what

[–] EarlTurlet@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

No one is forcing anyone to upvote or downvote. There's not even karma or anything here. If people don't want others to know how they feel, then they shouldn't say anything, no matter what form the speech takes.

[–] XiELEd@lemmy.fmhy.ml 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is an issue of privacy, though. There is a reason why people dislike google or their neighbour having access to their information, however mundane.

[–] JakeHimself@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's terrifying for a lot of people

[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Err, up/down voting is just a quick way to agree or disagree. If one is voting because they feel they can't stand behind their opinion if they expanded it in text... I don't know what to tell ya.

[–] kartoffelsaft@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the reasons I really disliked Reddit and stopped using it years ago was this way of using the voting system. If I make a post, and it gets voted something like +4-10, and a reply that is some rewording of "that's a dumb statement", what am I to think? I'm certainly not going to change my mind, no one gave me a good reason to.

If one is voting because they feel they can’t stand behind their opinion if they expanded it in text… I don’t know what to tell ya.

I'm inclined to believe a lot of people do this. This is not to say they are terrible for doing this, it's that it's human nature. Replying to someone with a well thought out post takes effort and, from my experience, makes the me realize i don't know shit about the subject. Point is, this way of using the voting system breeds half-thought opinions which is a host of a lot of other problems.

[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago
[–] consumer451@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

What about IP addresses? I see those are logged. Are they available to query?

I would imagine so, right?

If so, ummmmmmmm. That is not ok.

[–] lemming007@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Umm, anything you access on the Internet has to know your IP address, that's how the Internet works. Whether or not they choose to keep the logs is a different matter.

[–] consumer451@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ok, sure. But the difference is that I can’t make my own Reddit instance and then see all Reddit users IP addresses.

What is the vetting process of getting an instance federated?

Like if I was an authoritarian henchman, could I make an instance with a community about cats, get federated, then see all the IPs of users calling my boss a pooh bear, on all other instances?

Edit: what about swatting?

[–] azuth@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, sure. But the difference is that I can’t make my own Reddit instance and then see all Reddit users IP addresses.

There's no difference, you don't get IPs of other instances' users just an id

Like if I was an authoritarian henchman, could I make an instance with a community about cats, get federated, then see all the IPs of users calling my boss a pooh bear, on all other instances

Or you could just buy it from reddit.

what about swatting

Fix your police.

[–] consumer451@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This sounds a lot like “not my problem.” I am familiar with this type of response, but usually this level of irresponsible indifference comes from those evil VC backed companies. Except they don’t usually say it out loud.

If this is the attitude of the devs, I am deleting all my glowing recommendations of lemmy on other sites.

Is this really the attitude of the devs?

[–] azuth@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I suppose if you ignore the part where I said the problem doesn't actually exist (IPs are not included in federated content) then It can look like a not my problem response.

I wonder if you will also delete the FUD and misinformation you posted on this thread.

[–] veganzombeh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I haven't looked into it at all but I expect IPs are visible to instance admins. That's pretty typical of any online platform.

[–] consumer451@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But if I understand this, anyone that makes a lemmy instance can see the IPs of any commenter or voter, on any other federated instance?

What is the vetting process for federation?

[–] Awe@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Even if lemmy itself doesn't support it, there are plenty of ways to log visitors ips and correlate that data with lemmy to figure out who the user is.

EX: Using a revese proxy like cloudflare or nginx, which are both very common.

[–] Awe@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Even if lemmy itself doesn't support it, there are plenty of ways to log visitors ips and correlate that data with lemmy to figure out who the user is.

EX: Using a revese proxy like cloudflare or nginx, which are both very common.

[–] Awe@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Even if lemmy itself doesn't support it, there are plenty of ways to log visitors ips and correlate that data with lemmy to figure out who the user is.

EX: Using a revese proxy like cloudflare or nginx, which are both very common.

[–] newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

IP Adresse does not really matter. It changes every day or whenever I restart the router.

[–] drascus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your public IP stays the same for long periods of time, is geographically tied, and also associates you to certain ISPs based on your address space. How long does it stay the same? Months - Years potentially depending on the lease set on the IP.

[–] newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Well... not in Germany. Here you have to request a static ip

[–] Mininux@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It depends on the ISP, country etc

I'm in France and almost every time our IP changes it's because my parents changed our internet subscription, or because moved to another place

[–] newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Mininux@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

It's probably bad for privacy, but it makes self hosting super easy

[–] drascus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

every website logs ip. The question is whether the admin maintains those logs. However a web server needs your IP so they can route traffic back to you. That IP gets logged so that if something is not working the admin can review the logs and figure out what is going on. Many websites that are privacy focused either turn the logging off or dump the logs fairly quickly. Doing something like that means the admin needs to take steps to create other avenues for troubleshooting that don't factor user data into the scenario. With smaller projects like instances hosted on lemmy that might not always be feasible for volunteer admins. This doesn't necessarily mean they are doing anything wrong. Lots of websites maintain logs that include IP addresses.

[–] JesusTheCarpenter@feddit.uk -2 points 1 year ago

Radioactive? Honestly, some people are never satisfied and really like to constantly complain, don't they?