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.
I want to have the ability to turn on my echo chamber, when I want it, and also to be able to turn it off, when I want to step outside of it for awhile. This doesn’t have to be a toggle - it could be having an alt on a different instance.
I don’t want this choice made for me by people who think they know better how to run my own life than me. They can write an appeal that I will consider, but ultimately I want to make my own choice.
Having votes be publicly viewable allows us all the freedom to do as we choose with that information - including to ignore them entirely. What I would probably do with it is make large block lists of people on lemmy.ml, since it turns out that user blocks of an instance don’t block all that much. Fwiw, for everyone I’ve blocked in the past, I look through the post history to see if they merely are being disagreeable on a particular matter but overall are capable of contributing something substantive to a conversation, or are nothing more than a troll, setting out to vomit their emotions upon everyone worldwide across the Fediverse.
I’ve been a mod before, on Reddit, and am under no illusions anymore that everyone is worth listening to - a downvote from someone rational I will give serious thought about, but an idiot is an idiot, even if a community mod hasn’t banned them (yet?).
It’s like autocorrect: feel free to make suggestions, but it would be nice if I could have control when I want it, including/especially not wasting my time.