cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/361524

If you are browsing through https://kbin.social/ or whatever just click on “more” then activity.

There you’ll see info like boosts, reduces (downvotes), and favorites (upvotes?)

Works with all instances for lemmy or kbin material

  • @UrbenLegend@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12•2 years ago

    Honestly, I am not down for this at all. It’s one thing to be able to get that info by hosting your own instance and another thing to be publicly called out like that. From a privacy perspective, I just don’t need the average joe seeing what I’ve been upvoting and downvoting.

      • @deweydecibel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        9•2 years ago

        This is something of a ticking time bomb, I think. I don’t think the majority of people coming to Lemmy right now appreciate that their votes are public, and sooner or later somebody is going to write a bot or addon that uses that data to harass or censor users and it’s going to be a scandal that scares people away.

        Making votes public is a really bad idea because it disincentivizes users to vote how they like, for fear of reprisal. This is quintessential to a democratic system, and to a social media platform.

        You want this place to grow, and order for it to grow, users have to interact. They are the engine behind the content aggregation, they should never feel hesitation to vote.

        • @UrbenLegend@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5•2 years ago

          I couldn’t have said it better myself. Voting secrecy is very important. There’s a reason why your government ballot isn’t posted on some public bulletin board in the town square for everyone to see. I see no reason why it should be any different for online community voting.

          For me personally, I am somewhat okay with Lemmy’s implementation because it isn’t so public for the average user and is understandable given the requirements of federation (at least until we figure out a way to anonymize vote counts in aggregate), but kbin’s implementation just crosses the line IMHO.

        • @GeekyNerdyNerd@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I didn’t even realize votes are public here. On Reddit I’ve got that shit hidden because it’s extremely personal data. Just through upvote/downvote patterns you can figure out what someone’s likely political beliefs are, how religious they are, what their hobbies are, what disgusts them, what arouses them, what they find offensive…

          It’s genuinely insane that this stuff is public at all. I’m probably gonna stop using Lemmy because that shit being public is just way too dangerous imo, and I don’t trust myself enough to not participate if I keep coming back.

          If only reddit didn’t commit seppeku, then I’d never have even considered something so poorly thought out.

  • @bloodfart@lemmy.mlEnglish
    -2•2 years ago

    Why not just get rid of votes on lemmy altogether?

    Considering the easiest solution is some kind of public/private key cryptography that’s anonymized, how much cpu time is really worth throwing at the problem of making votes private?

    • @QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      It’s an option… I don’t really agree with it, but it is an option. Beehaw has already removed the ability of their users to downvote and see downvotes. So my guess is that someone could start up an instance that just removes the ability to upvote and downvote.

      But the vast majority of users joining Lemmy today are coming from Reddit and I’m sure that completely removing their ability to upvote/downvote will not be a popular option.

      • @bloodfart@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        Yeah, I agree with you there. The whole point of the Reddit site and software was to iterate on a social media platform whose content is self replicating (not actually self replicating, just produced and sorted and distributed by entities who don’t live on the balance sheet).

        Fundamentally though, wrestling with the impact and purpose of social media is more important than preserving an unbroken line of content pipelines. Lemmy was fine before the Reddit protests so it’s not like telling incoming users that they’ll have to figure out what’s cool instead of relying on a bunch of people they never met to tell them will kill the platform.