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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[–] Damage 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

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.

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[–] PopShark@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

As I said in another comment in this post - I believe seeing who upvoted or downvoted a post aids in identifying rabid downvoters and bots, though I personally use mobile Lemmy apps and am unable to access that data.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

At least NOW I can find out exactly who can call me out for saying something stupid, and thank that person for providing me with valuable information and knowledge.

Downvotes are actually kinda useful, even I benefit from them.

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[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 4 points 3 months ago

The more I spend time on Lemmy, the more I think it is in a lot of trouble. There are many serious issues that need to be addressed and I don't see how most of them can be.

Federation is touted as a Good, but has many drawbacks. Privacy (as listed in this post for example) for one, instead of algorithm curated/focused content federated servers each enforce (subconsciously or overtly) a theme, rampant user generation off multiple servers rendering moderation pointless, and so on.

Then there is the rampant issue of moderation abuse. It seems that the only reason to be a moderator is to not be annoyed at other people forcing their opinions on you. This reminder that admins/mods get yet another way to subject the users to their biases is the nail in the coffin IMO. "You vote this way? Banned because my feelings matter more".

Privacy is important for a lot of people and that is impossible to get on Lemmy unless something drastically changes, but it doesn't sound like this is will ever happen. The people that can see your data is not under your control at all and I think this fact alone will never allow Lemmy to grow to a place we can be happy with.

If admins can see data without limits, everyone should be able to. All 5 of us once that realization sinks in.

;tldr I don't think even admins should see peoples data but that seems impossible so...

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

Eh, I don't personally care.

But it could lead to nastiness as lemmy expands. If enough people go to the trouble of looking it up, you get some of them being assholes because people are prone to being assholes. That leads to drama. Drama leads to nastiness and worse things sometimes.

If that's going to be part of how lemmy works, so be it, I'm way too old to skip using a block list for assholes. But it might bite federated services in the ass, so it probably should be on the list to get implemented.

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