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Lemmy votes ARE public, should they be anonymous? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 2 months ago by lalo@discuss.tchncs.de to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

With the current way that ActivityPub works, this isn’t really possible. Every vote needs to be signed by some real user; if that changed such that anonymous votes were accepted then there’s nothing to stop any random person from adding 5 or 5,000 anonymous votes.

[-] lalo@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 2 months ago

What it the instance signs the activity? Then it propagates to others instances after local validation. That way only local admins would have access to voting data. Malicious instances could still be defederated/blocked/have votes disregarded.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 7 points 2 months ago

You are still trusting the instance admin. What if the admin pushes a code patch that transforms every like into a dislike based on a keyword?
Your history will never be fully portable.
It creates some weird dynamic: are we going to start dividing ourselves into "instances that obfuscate voting" and "instances that prefer transparency"?
What is the criteria for "malicious"?

[-] lalo@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 months ago

        Currently, any admin can modify any local user activity, can't they?
Not really, your local instance may still hold the vote data for validation. And therefore could be ported and resigned.
Don't see the problem.
Today, each instance decides whomever they want federation with. The ones who decide the criteria should be the same ones who decide whom  the instance federates with.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Admins could modify the activity, but users can verify from outside (if they so which). If the user data gets obfuscated, it becomes a complete black box.
But then you have two different events.
Here is one problem: the userbase on the Fediverse is already ridiculously small. If we keep dividing ourselves over every little preference, we will end up with nothing but a thousand little ghetto fiefdoms, used by people who will never ever learn how to tolerate a different point of view.
No. What will happen is that the silent majority will want to keep federation with everyone, but the intolerant minority will keep pushing instance admins to defederate from anyone who does not want to obfuscate votes. Eventually, LW will make a decision one way or another and everyone else will just have to decide if they want to stick with their principles or follow the leader so that they are not isolated.