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Lemmy votes ARE public, should they be anonymous?

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.

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

I am the admin of a website where we have a place where our users can post custom content and rate the content of others.

We have discussed how it works and should work many times and came to the conclusion that we’d never want it to be public. Any report of abuse will be checked by the website owner directly in the database and even admins don’t have full access. Everybody tries to stay as far away from the personal ratings as possible.

We also noticed that it would be a lot more fragile when there are not many voters. A whole group that is negative about something wouldn’t get as much harassment as a single person having a unique opinion.

On our website we have a comment section that isn’t anonymous, and we even noticed that people often don’t post something negative when it would be obvious that they are the only one who has voted/rated something. (“Negative” is almost always constructive in our case)

These are just a few things that I think add to this discussion.

Furbag ,

When I first signed up for reddit, the upvotes and downvotes were not only separately tallied, but also showed the usernames of the most recent people who did them if you hovered over the button. Then very shortly after that they changed it so that it made votes private by default, and you could override it in the settings, but almost nobody went to check that box back on. Eventually, they completely removed that feature around the time upvotes and downvotes were combined into one. which along with vote fuzzing was one of the worst changes to reddit comments, imo.

Lemmy feels like old reddit right now, which is a great spot to be in. I don’t think you necessarily need public vote info, but maybe it could be enabled on a per-community basis? I can see some communities like politics not wanting to add additional drama to the equation while other more content driven communities might enjoy knowing who was giving the feedback.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Unlike commenting and posting, which offers the who, what, where, and when parts of the message passing process, voting on Lemmy (now, for non-admins) is inherently an unequal process. Imagine if someone could send you an email whenever they wanted, but you were prevented from knowing who or even from what instance it is from, or when it was sent, do you think that could open up a potential for some variety of abuse? Or texting, phone calls, showing up at your door, etc.

Knowing the identity of the voter is an important part of properly receiving the “message”. It also increases freedom of choice, b/c otherwise the only way to prevent such messages (if, let’s take it as a given that some people find them annoying) would be to turn off voting entirely, either by going to one of the instances that does that, or just ignoring all (down-)votes yourself.

If we want the Fediverse to grow, and in particular to include less emotionally stunted humans that actually care when someone says something about them, good or bad, this will be a necessity. (Also, I was speaking tongue-in-cheek there, but genuinely social standards do vary across this wide world, and it really would increase content if there were not only more but different types of people, especially those most likely to generate quality content.)

And as other non-Lemmy methods of access to the Fediverse provide that feature - k/mbin, piefed, sublinks - Lemmy will fall increasingly behind if it were to ignore this very basic feature.

Making the votes public also increases honesty, since they are already public now. And if you don’t want to know who down-(up?-)votes you then… don’t look? But for those who want to know, it will be a great feature to have.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

How do mods see them? As far as I am aware, you have to be an instance admin. But it’s not difficult or time consuming to spin one up and I doubt the average user of Lemmy is technically incapable; most of the Fediverse users in general seem to be IT people and developers.

threelonmusketeers ,

Yeah, I moderate a few communities and have no idea how to see vote identities.

Blackmist ,

I suspect you need access to the database.

Looking at the source, “comment_like” seems to be where they’re stored.

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

Making a browser addon/extension wouldn’t be too hard if you can get the data somewhere. And then it’s just a click of a button to get the functionality.

unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov ,

“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.”

Given the strong presence of the privacy community on Lemmy, I have to say that I’m a bit shocked to hear so many in these discussions chiming in to support voting transparency.

I’m on board with the idea of using ring signatures to validate the legitimacy of a vote and moderating spammers based on metadata.

Or, for something (potentially) easier to implement, aggregating vote tallies at the instance level (votes visible to your instance admin and mods) and federating the votes anonymously by instance, so you might see something like:

  • lemmy.world: 9 up, 2 down
  • discuss.tchncs.de: 3 up, 4 down
  • Etc

Up/down votes are the method of community moderation that sets Reddit apart from many other platforms. If the Lemmy community is trying to capture some of that magic, which is good for both highlighting gems AND burying turds, radical transparency isn’t the path to get there.

In fact, I’d argue that the secret ballot has already been thoroughly discussed and tested throughout history and there are plenty of legitimate examples of why it would be better if they were more secret than they are today.

Many people have brought up the idea of brigading, but would this truly get better if votes are public? Is it hard to imagine noticing that an account you generally trust has voted and matching their vote, even subconsciously?

For those who feel that they aren’t able to post on Lemmy because downvotes make you feel sad, my feeling is that if you make posts in a community and they consistently get down voted to oblivion, you’re in the wrong place. The people in that community don’t value your contributions, and you should find another place to share them. This is the system working as intended and the mods should be thankful that such a system has been implemented.

The last point I’ll make is about the potential for a chilling effect - making users less likely to interact with a post in any way due to a fear of retaliation. Look - if you’re looking for a platform where all of your activity is public, those are out there. Why should we make Lemmy look just like every other platform?

ZILtoid1991 ,

I can see that in some circumstances, votes might need to be public due to protocol, otherwise public votes have their own uses, and so are private ones.

half_built_pyramids ,

I will always downvote ai shit. Brigade 100%. I’m fact this reminds me I need to get through all the ai subs and downvote everything again.

half_built_pyramids ,

We need to reveal downvotes so we can identify the ai lovers.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

And then?

half_built_pyramids ,

Also brigade them

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

You make a good point for anonymity of the votes

half_built_pyramids ,

Thanks, that’s what I was getting at, but I still also hate ai shit.

null ,

Sounds like opinions are pretty mixed. Maybe we should put it to a vote.

But then how do we decide if that vote should be public or not…

ItsComplicated ,

Overall my opinion is irrelevant, however, I think there is a huge difference in knowing a person votes vs how a person votes. The how should not be public, imo.

mihnt ,

They should just stay mostly hidden as they are now. I was harassed 3 times while using kbin for my voting habits. When I brought it up to ernest, him and mostly everyone else defended it, even though at the time I was actively being annoyed by someone.

It’ll make less people vote in the long run and will scare people off.

Nothing worse than hopping on something I do for leisure to realize that thread I voted on a week ago has now come back to bite me in the ass because the OP decided to go on a crusade and harass everyone that downvoted them.

Tudsamfa ,

Always in favor of taking power from mods that they can abuse and simply do not need.

The 1 “You think you can come into MY instance, and downvote ME?” post I read was 1 too many.

Solemn ,

I’m guessing we saw the same one, and that’s literally the only instance I’ve completely blocked.

Blackmist ,

Was it midwest.social by any chance?

Solemn ,

No, vegantheoryclub.org actually

snek ,
@snek@lemmy.world avatar

There is enough drama as it is. This will just open the door to shadowbanning and stalking and other horrors we have escaped by leaving reddit. It’s enough that it’s party available on kbin.

Coelacanth ,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

I always thought anonymous voting was preferable, or at least non-public. I don’t want “why did you downvote me bro!?”-arguments to occur, and I don’t want to know who approves of my comments or not. I think thinking of votes as an amorphous blob representing general public opinion on Lemmy is preferable to getting into the weeds of who exactly likes your posts and comments.

We could also have “karma” on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

If botting becomes enough of an issue that regular users need to report vote manipulation bots I’ll be fine with conceding my stance.

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

I agree. As long as anonymous voting doesn’t cause obvious trolling/spam issues, it should be preferred.

One of the reasons I’ve always found Facebook off-putting and never used it (even before learning about the shady practices) are the very visible votes. I tend to overanalyse any reaction and would judge people based on their votes on my posts, even if I consciously tried to avoid it. Similarly, I imagine some other people would do the same and I’d feel like I’m under surveillance.

corsicanguppy ,

As a comment on the other discussion says, there’s a reason ballots are secret.

blanketswithsmallpox ,

In reality you should be able to get an anonymized reference number to show your vote was tabulated correctly though.

Right now it comes down to an actual official finding your paper ballot with hand marked tracking and presuming to the computer read it correctly on an overall vote total.

Being able to do this anonymously and securely is where the problems lie. Which is also why digital only voting still isn’t a thing anywhere.

Tywele ,

I think votes shouldn’t be anonymous. Transparency is important to weed out trolls and bots. And public votes should be made easier accessible to every user not only admins/mods.

Damage ,

If I vote something I’m expressing my opinion just like I would with comment, and those are not anonymous.
I get that people are worried about griefers and psychos, but anonymity is just a (poor) cure for the symptoms, not for the disease; users who don’t behave should be banned, and if their instance turns out to be a detriment to the community, they should be defederated.

The anonymity we should ensure is the one of the person behind the username, to avoid doxxing and cyber-bullying.

FeelzGoodMan420 ,

No I’m worried about powertripping mods… That’s the issue.

snek ,
@snek@lemmy.world avatar

Why is this so universal?

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

Because too many mods are power tripping assholes and I say that as someone whose been a mod in various corners of the Internet since at least 2000.

The best mods, and admins, are nearly invisible and as close to drama free as possible.

snek ,
@snek@lemmy.world avatar

I am Palestinian and I just got banned from world news ml for saying that some Israeli hostages experienced rape/sexual assault/abuse without “credible evidence”. Somehow the mod equated this with me not giving a fuck about Palestinian prisoners of war.

No my man… I was raped myself as a teen. So to me, all rapes are equal no matter who does it to whom.

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