Question I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on possibly making votes public. This has been discussed in a lot of other issues, but here's a dedicated one for discussion. Positives Could help figh...
Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
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.
i already have had multiple weirdos harass me on lemmy for not being leftist enough. i’ve blocked dozens now, and really kills the experience to have some crazy people go around and brigading your comments because you disagree with their political viewpoint slightly.
way too many people take the internet comments/points WAY too seriously…
I agree. I already tend to get tossed into a category because I don’t agree with a majority of the user base. If people can get categorized more by how they vote, and lemmy users are already pretty savvy, I can see a scenario where people get tagged.
Exactly. We need counter views. One of the problems with any type of social media has been echo chambers and the lack of healthy debate/conversation. People have forgotten how to have a civil debate/conversation with someone else. And people tend to act like, if you don’t 100% agree with me, than not only can we not be friends, but you’re actively an enemy. That shouldn’t be the case. We do not need everyone to agree on everything, it should be acceptable to have a different opinion.
With everything public, we’re going to have no healthy conversation since people will use previous votes (up or down) against someone. One of the issues is, an up/down vote by itself doesn’t give much insight into anything. It’s not like the vote itself is quantified. We already see people try this with digging into post history to make assumptions of someone and bring it up as “evidence”.
Man it doesn’t even need to devolve into a debate. You get berated just for having an opinion on something more and more. That’s the problem with the voting system anyways. People that don’t share an opinion with you shouldn’t even have an option to down vote. Just don’t vote at all. Up votes are for shared opinions. But even then the biggest gripe I had with reddit was the system has the up voted “popular” comments as the most viewed as well, leaving the opinions of people unseen without looking for them.
People are impressionable. If they see everyone agreeing with a comment they feel they need to skew their opinion towards the common dissent or risk being alienated. We’re communal creatures. And social media screwed with our heads with the need to fit in.
The problem is its already pretty public, just for mods and admins, and non-lemmy instances.
While I agree its not ideal to have everything be public, given it functionally already is, this just makes it easier for users to see. Right now its a minor hurdle, but still a hurdle - but your votes are not really private/anonymous to start with.
I personally think it should be locked down and votes should be kept under a very tight lock and key.
I posted this already as a response, so I’ll sort of post it here. If we start mapping users to their IRL selves, and agencies can start capturing what someone votes on, you have a few problems. 1) Marketing agencies selling your data again. 2) Governments can start using someones posts against them. You’re might not, but there are several that will. And Lemmy is a global platform.
I absolutely agree that its a problem. The problem is there is nothing stopping companies/governments from doing that now, and I don’t know if its feasible to make them actually private on Lemmy.
Right now, they aren’t private, you just need a few extra steps to see it all.
Agreed. I’ve never liked that it’s already as public as it is. I remember when Lemmy was taking off and there was a discussion and to me it seemed like people were in favor of Lemmy stepping up user security, but seems that never happened. If user security isn’t critical, than the Fediverse is a complete failure and should NOT be used by anyone for any reason.
If you are particularly concerned that you’re going to be identified IRL based on your participation online, you should be changing your identity frequently rather than using the same account for a year+.
Data is not suddenly public just because some people have access to it. Data is public when it’s available for anyone to look at. Privacy is almost always going to be a trust issue on some level, and very few things are possible to do truly anonymously. Some data will always be available to someone in a position where it’s possible to abuse. Instance admins can see your IP address. Should that be available for everyone to see?
Y’know, that’s fair. I think I misspoke, and meant to say that the admins of your instance can see your IP but not the admins of another (assuming you’re not self hosting on your home PC without a VPN), but I’m not 100% sure that’s true because I’ve never looked at the protocol.
If every interaction is already public on the backend/API level, then simply not showing the info to users is just a transparency issue.
The more I’m thinking about this, the more I believe it’s a cultural/expectations thing. On websites like Tumblr, all of your reblogs and likes are public info, but it’s very up front about that. Social media like Facebook, IG, and sites like Discord, it’s the same; you can look through the list of everyone who reacted.
As far as I know right now, IP and such details are your instance only.
Votes, however, are visible across any instance. I agree its a transparency issue. Right now I think a of of folks believe their votes to be anonymous (or only visible to their instance admins at most), but that’s not true at all.
That’s really good to know, and not how I thought the system worked previously. I thought instances were responsible for all vote aggregation and simply reported totals to each other at regular intervals, plus submitting comments/edits from users which are more obviously public
Yup, all visible. The only exceptions are fully private instances (or mostly private, with limited federation) and local only communities.
kbin/mbin also make all these votes public, so you could even just be on an mbin server and see all the votes. So right now its like… jumping over an 8" high hurdle. Or doing the limbo under a pole at 5’. You have to do something, just not much. I wouldn’t call it completely non-trivial to do, but it isn’t rocket surgery either.
I am fan of Swiss Appenzeln Innerrhoden voting system. In public and with hands up. It’s supporting the civic courage values. It’s easy to ostracize people for no reason when you’re anonymous
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.
i already have had multiple weirdos harass me on lemmy for not being leftist enough. i’ve blocked dozens now, and really kills the experience to have some crazy people go around and brigading your comments because you disagree with their political viewpoint slightly.
way too many people take the internet comments/points WAY too seriously…
I agree. I already tend to get tossed into a category because I don’t agree with a majority of the user base. If people can get categorized more by how they vote, and lemmy users are already pretty savvy, I can see a scenario where people get tagged.
Exactly. We need counter views. One of the problems with any type of social media has been echo chambers and the lack of healthy debate/conversation. People have forgotten how to have a civil debate/conversation with someone else. And people tend to act like, if you don’t 100% agree with me, than not only can we not be friends, but you’re actively an enemy. That shouldn’t be the case. We do not need everyone to agree on everything, it should be acceptable to have a different opinion.
With everything public, we’re going to have no healthy conversation since people will use previous votes (up or down) against someone. One of the issues is, an up/down vote by itself doesn’t give much insight into anything. It’s not like the vote itself is quantified. We already see people try this with digging into post history to make assumptions of someone and bring it up as “evidence”.
Man it doesn’t even need to devolve into a debate. You get berated just for having an opinion on something more and more. That’s the problem with the voting system anyways. People that don’t share an opinion with you shouldn’t even have an option to down vote. Just don’t vote at all. Up votes are for shared opinions. But even then the biggest gripe I had with reddit was the system has the up voted “popular” comments as the most viewed as well, leaving the opinions of people unseen without looking for them.
People are impressionable. If they see everyone agreeing with a comment they feel they need to skew their opinion towards the common dissent or risk being alienated. We’re communal creatures. And social media screwed with our heads with the need to fit in.
The problem is its already pretty public, just for mods and admins, and non-lemmy instances.
While I agree its not ideal to have everything be public, given it functionally already is, this just makes it easier for users to see. Right now its a minor hurdle, but still a hurdle - but your votes are not really private/anonymous to start with.
I personally think it should be locked down and votes should be kept under a very tight lock and key.
I posted this already as a response, so I’ll sort of post it here. If we start mapping users to their IRL selves, and agencies can start capturing what someone votes on, you have a few problems. 1) Marketing agencies selling your data again. 2) Governments can start using someones posts against them. You’re might not, but there are several that will. And Lemmy is a global platform.
I absolutely agree that its a problem. The problem is there is nothing stopping companies/governments from doing that now, and I don’t know if its feasible to make them actually private on Lemmy.
Right now, they aren’t private, you just need a few extra steps to see it all.
Agreed. I’ve never liked that it’s already as public as it is. I remember when Lemmy was taking off and there was a discussion and to me it seemed like people were in favor of Lemmy stepping up user security, but seems that never happened. If user security isn’t critical, than the Fediverse is a complete failure and should NOT be used by anyone for any reason.
If you are particularly concerned that you’re going to be identified IRL based on your participation online, you should be changing your identity frequently rather than using the same account for a year+.
Data is not suddenly public just because some people have access to it. Data is public when it’s available for anyone to look at. Privacy is almost always going to be a trust issue on some level, and very few things are possible to do truly anonymously. Some data will always be available to someone in a position where it’s possible to abuse. Instance admins can see your IP address. Should that be available for everyone to see?
Anyone can stand up an instance though. So its available for anyone to look at right now.
I don’t think it should be made easier, but I don’t think its fair to suggest its currently private in any way, shape, or form today.
Because it is decidedly not.
Y’know, that’s fair. I think I misspoke, and meant to say that the admins of your instance can see your IP but not the admins of another (assuming you’re not self hosting on your home PC without a VPN), but I’m not 100% sure that’s true because I’ve never looked at the protocol.
If every interaction is already public on the backend/API level, then simply not showing the info to users is just a transparency issue.
The more I’m thinking about this, the more I believe it’s a cultural/expectations thing. On websites like Tumblr, all of your reblogs and likes are public info, but it’s very up front about that. Social media like Facebook, IG, and sites like Discord, it’s the same; you can look through the list of everyone who reacted.
As far as I know right now, IP and such details are your instance only.
Votes, however, are visible across any instance. I agree its a transparency issue. Right now I think a of of folks believe their votes to be anonymous (or only visible to their instance admins at most), but that’s not true at all.
That’s really good to know, and not how I thought the system worked previously. I thought instances were responsible for all vote aggregation and simply reported totals to each other at regular intervals, plus submitting comments/edits from users which are more obviously public
Yup, all visible. The only exceptions are fully private instances (or mostly private, with limited federation) and local only communities.
kbin/mbin also make all these votes public, so you could even just be on an mbin server and see all the votes. So right now its like… jumping over an 8" high hurdle. Or doing the limbo under a pole at 5’. You have to do something, just not much. I wouldn’t call it completely non-trivial to do, but it isn’t rocket surgery either.
I am fan of Swiss Appenzeln Innerrhoden voting system. In public and with hands up. It’s supporting the civic courage values. It’s easy to ostracize people for no reason when you’re anonymous
LLMs are smarter than the average foe already and governments spend millions on online propaganda. We NEED a witch hunt and lots of fire