Hey folks! Just realized something that makes Lemmy different from Reddit. Because of the federation, your votes are not technically anonymous on Lemmy. At least, I think.
Although there’s no UI to look at a user’s voting history yet, one could conceivably be built by an instance. Perhaps coincidentally, I hear there’s instances out there populated by mostly bots?
It’s also technically not on Reddit either. Letting people see what you up/downvoted is a setting that you can toggle as desired, although I believe that it defaults to “off”.
Because in order to federate, user data needs to be shared, including the username. It prevents double votes from the same account and also allows votes to be rescinded at the user’s discretion, at which point the instance will send effectively an undo signal for the activity.
The first rule of the Fediverse is to make sure you’re perfectly okay with the entire internet seeing your account activity, including votes and favourites. If you’re unsure or are worried you might regret it, best not to post it at all. This is equally true on all social media but the way the Fediverse works just makes it more obvious.
From a technical standpoint, it’s not different from Reddit. The only difference here is that normal people can host their own instances, whereas Reddit is only hosted by the company and they can keep it under wraps.
In fact, Reddit has suspended people for upvoting before.
True, but in Unidan’s defense, it was a jackdaw, not a crow.
We need Unidan back now more than ever 🤗🐦⬛
Multidan.
Agreed from a technical standpoint.
But the implications are still interesting. One might (big might) trust Reddit as an organization not to use this data for evil, but with federation, there’s nothing stopping an instance from simply releasing all users’ voting history to be public.
Of course, my instance didn’t even ask for an email to sign up, so my entire account is anonymous that way.
I wonder if there are technical ways to federate votes anonymously?
but with federation, there’s nothing stopping an instance from simply releasing all users’ voting history to be public.
Which kbin.social does.
But the implications are still interesting. One might (big might) trust Reddit as an organization not to use this data for evil, but with federation, there’s nothing stopping an instance from simply releasing all users’ voting history to be public.
Another potential privacy issue is that deleted content stays on server and I believe it’s similar with posted images.
I think this issue is overblown. Instances of Lemmy might run modified code and choose to save things that the user intended to delete, of course, but the default setup of Lemmy seems reasonable to me in terms of how it treats deletion.
Currently it keeps deleted posts forever to allow users to un-delete if they choose, but deleting your account clears everything. And I believe there’s work in progress to discard deleted posts after 30 days. Details here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2977
They’re definitely not anonymous, and Kbin actually does have the UI to show who is upvoting and downvoting any post if you view it on there.
I love it. I’ve already used that feature to block someone who was stalking my posts and downvoting them. Then I got curious and checked out a bunch of posts on the front page that had downvotes but didnt really warrant them. I found there were about 5 accounts who were heavy downvoters for apparently no reason. They also got blocked.
I agree, I think it’s useful! I also blocked a person yesterday who was downvote stalking me, they clearly didn’t want to see the things I was posting anyway.
Can someone show me how to find this? I can’t figure it out.
Also curious if it’s possible to see who is subscribed to a magazine or who is following me.
More > activity > reduces for Kbin.
Scroll to the bottom of the thread and find reduces for the thread.
Yes, I thought that was implied. Voting is part of moderation. All moderation must be radically transparent. Your voting history is the weight of your credibility and reputation on Lemmy.
It also discourages people from upvoting more controversial topics, for better or for worse.
I just hope it doesn’t turn into Twitter’s culture of ruining people’s lives by showing they liked a sus tweet 5 years ago, LMAO.
My plan was just to assume a new identity every 6 months or so and never post identifiable information. I see how that would be a problem if someone where to use their real identity. In that case, they probably wouldn’t vote at all, that’s not great. Maybe have a separate anonymous account ? And only use your real account for making “statements” including your votes.
It would be nice if we could upvote interesting posts rather that posts that we agree with.
Isn’t that what upvotes are supposed to be for? Just not how people actually use them…
@interdimensionalmeme @o_o Agreed! Your voting history will help others gauge how objective (or not) you are.
I didn’t know, that’s awesome! Downvote shouldn’t be the “fuck you I disagree” button, save that garbage for Twitter and Reddit. Downvote is there for democratically killing malevolent bullshit. Expose the names!
In term of privacy this is pretty bad though. From the upvotes/downvotes activity you can very easily build a whole graph of stuff you like/dislike. For advertisers that’s juicy data.
It’s sometimes hard to separate those feelings
Maybe a 3 button setup
- Agreed and acceptable content
- Disagree and acceptable content
- Bad content
Default Rankings are based on minimum bad-content/maximum agreed count
And controversial ranking is based on minimum bad-content/maximum good-content count (agree+disagree)This way even comments that people disagree with can be exposed so long as it’s still good content
Brigadiers who blindly vote everything bad content to maliciously influence rankings can be identified and removed for manipulation, while people who vehemently disgree with an idea can still have that outlet without influencing the community/magazine haphazardly
Yeah I never understood to pearl clutching about downvotes. It just reeks of “everyone who drives faster than me is a lunatic, everyone who drives slower than me is a granny” mentality.
Fuck you, I disagree.
Is that better?
When us older folks say “Anything you put on the public internet should be considered public and recorded forever”, it’s because of that.
