Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
Hard no from me
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit. We all know those fuckos are out there
Voting on Reddit-like platforms is soft moderation by a community, and if you disincentive that, the whole model kinda falls apart IMO
I agree with you. I remember arguing about this a year ago when people first discovered votes were public on Kbin. I don’t want to obsess over who up- or downvoted me and I don’t want anyone else doing that either. Discussions are healthier when voting is anonymous (or at least obscured as is currently the case).
If bots become such an overwhelming problem that all regular users need access to voting records to better report all the bots I’ll maybe revisit my stance. But right now the gains seem dubious.
Yep. Same for me.
Mod-admins are already doing this, even if you vote and don’t comment on something.
It’s already public, it’s just lemmy users who don’t see them.
Isn’t the obvious thing to just have it be an option that admins can enable or disable? Maybe have a third option for only showing upvotes? Then it’s up to each instance to decide, and users can decide to go to instances with the option their prefer.
If they’re a serial downvoter, then it’s easier for you to track them and block them as well. Double edged sword i think
I thought blocks were one way - you can’t see anything from the person you blocked, but they can still see your stuff?
Hmm, i haven’t have experience with that, but even then you achieve your peace of mind and whatever they do means nothing.
I downvoted SO much more on Reddit than I do here. The comment quality here is leagues better.
That’s why I’d like it.
So to catch a single “serial downvoter” you’d open up all your voting to vote stalkers? If it’s a single person, honestly why does it matter?
Actually what’s the case with vote stalker? I haven’t seen them anywhere and i don’t know what’s so bad till have to hold off a feature just because of them.
Would be the people that would go through your vote history and then grief you based on it. Kinda like people that sift through people’s comment history to grief them, just now it wouldn’t allow any “anonymous” interaction with posts.
Ahh, i see.
It doesn’t REALLY matter. More of a thing where it would be fun to catch him since he’s really obsessed with me. But meh, in the end, doesn’t matter. And I blocked him, so…
What might be interesting would be to have it displayed, but grouped by instance. That way we could see some data and potentially uncover troll instances or attempts to brigade the conversation without opening ourselves up to personal attacks.
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit.
They can read your comment history why would you care about them being able to see what you upvoted?
Voting on Reddit-like platforms is soft moderation by a community, and if you disincentive that,
How does that disincentive it? It actually makes it better
I specifically don’t comment on people that give off the vibe they might be one of those kind of nutjobs, precisely because it gives them a notification with my username attached if I do. I’m on this site to kill some time with low effort, I want to minimise the risk of attracting the attention of some weirdo.
I downvote in those scenarios and then report if appropriate. If enough other users feel the same way the comment goes down to the bottom of the thread and fewer users see it. Especially if it’s something that a mod eventually removes, as it reduces the reach until a mod can get to it.
If I risk retaliation for doing that, I (and others) will just stop, meaning those comments stay up front & centre and we lose that soft moderation plus that engagement in general. Going into the comments will just end up being a worse experience
I get your point but if you want to just lurk and read don’t vote either
I don’t want some nutjob with too much time stalking me because I upvoted something about climate change or downvoted some bigoted shit. We all know those fuckos are out there
I’m dealing with one right now! lol It’s crazy.
You don’t even have serial downvoters. You have a few comments without many downvotes. You just consistently post the worst possible political pisstakes repeatedly and constantly and nobody likes them when they run across it every time.
You just consistently post the worst possible political pisstakes repeatedly
Strange that you would say that. I haven’t posted any political articles to this community. This is the fediverse community.
nobody likes them when they run across it every time.
Really? So an article about a ninety year old woman, who finally graduates college, posted to my own sub, with 3 subscribers, and got 9 votes within a minute of posting is political? That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
Or 13 downvotes in my own educational sub about a college that gives out 3-year degrees. It has 2 subscribers in that sub. That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
Or 14 downvotes about a program serving underprivileged children and helping them go to college. and the downvotes were within 2 minutes of posting. To a sub that has 2 subscribers. That doesn’t seem like a political “pisstake.”
And since all my postings to a political sub are about third parties, from legit news orgs, seems kind of a stretch to call them “political pisstakes.”
But wait, I haven’t posted any of those articles to this community. So strange how you would know so much about what I post.
Of course, posting history is public. But I haven’t checked your post history, because I don’t care. Strange that you would check mine. And then not mention all of the non-political posts.
You know, what’s really weird too? I posted some articles to the c/science committee. And even some posters there commented on how strange it was that my posts were being downvoted so much and so fast, when the articles weren’t political at all.
Luckily the science people are cool, and the upvotes quickly outnumbered the downvotes.
But yeah, they were definitely curious about why so many downvotes so quickly on neutral science reporting.
But meh, probably just a coincidence.
I think maybe you are right. Because for sure there wouldn’t be an incel loser, who is so butthurt about my not voting for his candidate, that he’d follow me around. And downvote articles and take screenshots of how much I post, or set up alternate accounts just to engage with me after I blocked him.
That’s way too strange. There is no way a loser would be so pathetic to do that. All because he doesn’t like the Green Party.
So now that I’ve thought about it, I agree with you.
It would be just too crazy that an incel loser like that would follow me around. I mean, sure he can’t get a girlfriend, but hey, I’m sure he’s not THAT mad at the world. :)
Touch sum fucken grass dude
Or how about I use a forum that doesn’t have incels that get off on downvoting people. There is that.
That’s a lot of words man
Well it does take about 20 seconds to read, I so can understand your frustration.
No, votes should not be displayed public.
Blocking those who downvote creates further polarisation, echo chambers and an environment more hostile to discussion and honest exchange.
Following those who upvote creates personality cults and nepotism and devalues the content.
environment more hostile to discussion and honest exchange.
“Voting” and “discussion” are separate things. The old forums did not have voting but still had polarization, personal attacks, hellthreads, etc.
The problem is that Reddit/Facebook turned “voting” from a tool meant to measure “quality” (e.g, this post is relevant to the community, this comment does not add to the discussion) into a tool to measure “popularity” (I agree with this, so I vote up. I don’t like this, so I downvote).
Either get rid of voting altogether, or let’s bring back a culture where “votes” are meant to signal quality.
Redditors did that, rather than reddit I’d argue. Still the same result of becoming a far less useful heuristic though.
Not really sure how to “fix” a system like that, which depends on the masses to do something correctly. They… don’t.
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What alternatives to votes would you propose to handle this better? Because I have no doubt the same thing will happen here too…
It’s just how people work, especially when things get heated. That said, perhaps that’s a poor example as a heated discussion isn’t necessary a helpful/constructive one…
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We can fix that by having moderators that can establish clear guidelines and show enough authority and can be trusted by the community. And yes, if the guidelines include something like:
Downvotes are not for disagreement. It’s fine to downvote if the argument is false or deliberately misleading, but if someone is making a good faith argument that you disagree with, either make a constructive response or simply let it go
Then the mods would be completely justified to call out users who are drive-by downvoting.
Or some self entitled 3rd party admin would do that just because they’d feel like people owed them explanations.
Hey, do I owe you anything for all the space I’m taking in your head or am I still living rent-free?
If you did it would not be rent free, or would it, einstein. But no worry, i don’t think about you, just this topic and your enthusiasm for it triggered my reply :)
Have a downvote for going off topic and “personal”.
You are the one pontificating in my comment, and I am the one going personal. Seems like your reasoning is as good as your reading comprehension.
But hey, thanks for stopping by!
But… we had those on reddit. I didn’t see many actual examples of the “moderator gone power crazy” stereotype that is so often echoed there (especially by people who fully deserved the moderator action they received).
The issue wasn’t that the rules were clear. The issue was that people refused to read them in the first place, and became hyper-defensive and obstinate whenever they were called out on it, even by moderators.
No moderator went on to call out users who were down voting for disagreement, because this data is not public on Reddit.
(Score: 5, Insightful)
Meta-moderation and multi-dimensional voting. We were happier with slashdot and we took it for granted.
Maybe the upvotes should only be available to the person who owns the comment or post. Maybe to the mods and admins, too?
Lemmy admins can already see the votes (up and down). Used to just be in the database (
select * from comment_like where person_id = ?), but since some 19.x update, it’s a menu item with a GUI popup:
Apparently, non-admins can already do this on platforms like kbin.
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Same idiots playing games with each others in the open is better than bots and manipulation going on behind the scenes.
Do not make votes public. It will lead to personal attacks.
I think people misunderstand. I too would prefer privacy, but theres a big BUT.
Due to how the federation works, anyone who is tech savvy enough can already see votes. One way is to run an instance.
This change doesn’t lower privacy, it aligns expectations with reality. A false sense of privacy, which people obviously show here in the comments, is way more dangerous.
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.
It should be noted that anyone can set up a Lemmy server and track votes already. For instance, for this post, I see this screen:
This is available for both comments and posts. The database itself contains even more details, such as time and date of when the server broadcast the vote (which is often immediately or a few seconds later).
It’s not as easy to do for trolls to set up a server, but comments, posts, favourites, votes, edits, and deletions should be considered public when it comes to most fediverse protocols, unless the server does not federate (like truth.social) or only federates with a few select servers. It’s trivial to edit software like Lemmy to keep every edit or undone vote, and there’s nothing your server admins will notice.
No need for a Lemmy server, kbin/mbin put it in their interface
https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/267356/Lemmy-devs-are-considering-making-all-votes-public-have-your/favourites
Saying the fediverse is good for privacy is just plain false, that’s the kind of information anyone can acquire, even an ad company. All they have to do is federate a silent instance and see all you do.
Kbin/Mbin show votes too.
Edit: But I think downvotes are hidden by default now.
anyone can set up a Lemmy server
This is not the case. What percentage of the population could set up a Lemmy server, do you think? 1%? 0.1%? Of those, what percentage have the time to set up a Lemmy server? 1%?
As I’ve learned from this thread, it’s actually easier: copy the link to a post or comment into the search bar of any connected mbin instance and you can see all downvotes. If you can find a kbin instance that’s still up, you can also see the downvotes.
Yes I know. Mbin and Kbin should be encouraged to change this. We’re currently in a fairly benign environment so it doesn’t really matter but if the threadiverse ever got big then this could become serious enough to be a cause for defederation.
Mbin and Kbin should be encouraged to change this.
Who are you to impose how others run their instance? Clearly this should be an option that each instance can set by itself. You are of course free to defederate, but that’s kinda like an instance that has downvotes disabled defederating from instances that have downvotes enabled. You can do it but it’s kind of arbitrary I would say.
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That’s way too much work. I just logged into my original account on kbin.social and tapped on the activity button to see votes before that instance went down. If I want to see votes again I can set up an account on any kbin or mbin instance in less than a minute and do the same thing.
Huh, I didn’t know kbin did that. Useful!
Boy oh boy, it sure is a mystery why democracies have people vote privately
The last thing I need is people knowing I upvoted a nsfw post, so nope thanks.
I rather not. If it does happen, I’ll just rss Lemmy and stop using my account. I like Lemmy the way it is because there’s not much focus on votes and more on actual discussion.
I was really confused seeing this post, because I always assumed that Lemmy votes were public. Because how else are instances going to sync them? And indeed, the API exposes them completely, this change will just make it easier.
Then I was really confused when I saw so many comments being against it. A lot of “I’ll leave if votes become public” in here. That’s a lot of people who somehow assumed Lemmy was private. Aren’t we all supposed to be Linux nerds in here?
Have you SEEN the drama that happens in this place? I feel like this is just asking for weird nobodies to harass anyone who quietly disagrees with them.
If this passes then I’m outta here.
No thank you. I’ve already had one person go off on me because of some perceived offense: https://lemm.ee/comment/13768482
Not everyone has a github account and can comment or vote there.
But, agree. Don’t think any good will come from making votes public. Any pro/con should be measured against who it benefits. If it’s mods or devs, there are always alternatives
If it’s end-users, consider the edge-cases and the repercussions of malicious actors having access to those individual preferences.
I’m seeing lots of comments here saying that server admins can already see vote data, and therefore it is not private.
But from my point of view, having a handful of people able to extract voting data using their position of trust on the lemmy network is very different from broadcasting voting data to everyone on lemmy. And although you can argue that it is possible to create a new server and federate and blah-blah-blah to view votes; that argument sounds to me like “don’t bother locking your front door, because that type of lock can be defeated by a lock-picking tools.”
And even aside from all that discussion about who can access what; there is another key point that I think is overlooked: Making voter information public makes it ‘normal’ thing to monitor and discuss. Currently there is an expectation that people won’t look at or discuss that information (even if they hypothetically could get access). But by making it public, the expectation then is that everyone will look at that information. That would create a change in tone and meaning of votes and discussion around votes.
I would hate to have to deal with “why did you downvote me?” comments, but I’m also not sure I would have the self control to abstain from leaving such a comment myself.
I think that making vote identities easily accesible to every user runs the risk of increasing harassment and decreasing discussion quality.
