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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by npdean@lemmy.today to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

I recently learned that voting on lemmy is not anonymous. Anyone can get information about who has upvoted and downvoted a post or comment.

In combination with your IP, this is a massive privacy (maybe even physical security) risk. Also, people can target you for your votes.

Sadly, this is something where I would prefer Reddit over Lemmy. Big tech scrapes data from both places anyways, at least Reddit is safe.

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[-] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 81 points 1 week ago

Why is public voting a massive privacy and physical threat but public posting and commenting is not?

[-] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Would be my question as well. It seems quite obvious that if you participate in publicly viewable discussion, that the stuff you do is publicly viewable.

If you don't want it associated to your physical person, use a VPN and unidentifiable account name.

(And the statement "at least reddit is safe" seems absolutely ridiculous to me.)

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[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

dude is just bent out of shape because they got called out for disagreeing Russia should go home and leave Ukraine alone.

https://lemmy.world/comment/18706617

[-] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 points 1 week ago

I mean it is kind of a dick move to spy on downvotes and then demand that someone respond to you. The dude is wrong as hell, but I do agree with the overall principle that not every vote needs to be subject to someone getting interrogated as to why they voted that way.

Their shock at finding out that it works that way is, of course, why the currently Lemmy UI is badly designed because it creates the illusion for people that their votes are private. They definitely should not do that.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

It's not something I usually do, but I'm tired of not calling out people on shitty opinions in regards to fascism. especially when it comes to a simple perspective of "this bad thing is bad".

it's like someone downvoting because a comment said "fuck cancer". like...why? my mind can't even fathom why anyone would dislike that kind of message unless they themselves are cancer or advocate for the advancement of cancer.

typically I don't give a shit about downvotes, but it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I get it. You're not wrong.

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[-] FelixCress@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I read the thread and it was definitely worth calling him out this time.

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[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 8 points 1 week ago

I feel hat posts/comments are much more of a privacy exposure than any vote.
If the OP wants private voting vs their post/comments then two account would be the solution to that - this is how it is done in the backend on piefed

[-] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 10 points 1 week ago

Also if only voting is so bad, just don't vote. Those votes are not used for anything but ranking in lists for others, you'll not see any difference for yourself if you stop voting.

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[-] sundray@lemmus.org 7 points 1 week ago

If you're a lurker who votes, voting would be your only exposure.

[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 7 points 1 week ago

If you are a lurker that votes then I very little that some random could tie back to your home address or even IP

[-] Saleh@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

Which only has rather limited information derivable from it. The most "identifying" would be to vote regularly on a community dedicated to your local area.

If you don't trust your instance with knowing your IP-address, then the issue is not going to be solved by "anonymous voting". Because your instance has to know if you voted on something or not, so votes cannot be done multiple times. This is unavoidable and equal to the situation when using reddit. Except that you can choose a different instance if you distrust the current instance.

OP either did not think through what he is claiming or he is driven by an agenda.

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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
138 points (77.0% liked)

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