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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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[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

~~Sill waiting for someone to show me how to see what someone up votes and down votes on Lemmy through a pre-existing Mbin or Mastodon instance. That's really been the only convincing argument to make them public that I've heard. (That convinces me, I mean.) But nobody has shown it is possible through fedia.io for example. I tried but couldn't see it, but it's possible I was looking in the wrong place.~~

It's on mbin's post/comment under more > activity. Not under a user's profile.

[-] kali@fedia.io 2 points 2 months ago

Here is a video of me doing it on my phone with fedia.io: https://files.catbox.moe/nb5rx1.mp4 For some reason it wouldn't show me reduces (downvotes), though.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago

Ahhhh, okay. I was expecting it to be under a user but it is attached to the post. That makes targeted harassment marginally more difficult but regardless, I definitely can see that it's trivial to see the upvotes (favorites) and downvotes (reduces).

Whether or not this is "good" or "bad" I'm still undecided on, but you've officially convinced me that it is trivial to see exactly who voted (and how) on a post (or comment). You do not need to "set up an instance" like many people say.