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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by cosmicrookie@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don't really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from "How" to "Why" because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

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[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 19 points 1 month ago

If someone is posting about you downvoting them, then they're a seriously flawed individual. Some people will take any reason they can to call other people racist. I think it's a fetish, honestly.

You're fine.

[-] Aeri@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

I just block anyone who confronts me about why I voted a certain way. "Because I felt like it, fuck off cunt" is my go-to justification.

[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

I like your style

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[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Much easier to determine vote manipulation when there is no central authority to handle it and the votes, as well as moderation actions, are publicly visible.

[-] Andy_R@feddit.uk 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The Fediverse is open, everything you do on here is fully public.

It's why I prefer it over reddit, where who knows what really happens with all the vote manipulation and brigading.

To answer your question, it is all listed alongside upvotes on the posts if using mbin.

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[-] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

The protocol is ActivityPub not ActivityPriv

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm pretty sure the Pub doesn't stand for Public, but rather Publish.

edit: not saying that it is private, just my opinion on whether the pub is an adjective or a verb

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And what does publishing something do? Does it make it widely available to the public?

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[-] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

You are right but you can’t exactly publish something and expect it to be private

[-] Fedditor385@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Still Publish, not Privish.

[-] Klear@quokk.au 2 points 1 month ago

And certainly not ActivityCafé

[-] K3can@lemmy.radio 8 points 1 month ago

Isn't the Fediverse supposed to be open?

You can show your personal support for something by upvoting it or your opposition to something by downvoting it, but if you don't want to take a stance on something at all, you don't have to.

It's an entirely optional mechanic. You can fully utilize Lemmy to view, post, and comment without ever voting if you don't want to.

As far as I'm aware, the votes don't really matter, anyway. Lemmy doesn't seem to use karma the way that Reddit does. i.e. I've never seen a post removed because the user didn't have enough karma, etc.

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[-] trk@aussie.zone 7 points 1 month ago

Who cares? Upvote what you like, downvote what you don't. Who cares if someone has a whinge.

[-] urheber@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 months ago
[-] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Thanks! That's is very helpful and also concerning

Not sure how I feel about this

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

Why is that concerning? The whole system was meant to be transparent

[-] RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Not the OP, but i find it concerning because this enables creating a very detailed profile of a users interests, political alignment, medical issues, sexual orientation etc. Even if they never post anything! We should all know by now that there are bad actors actively using this kind of data in the worst ways imaginable. In the US this can already have life threatening consequences (ICE raids etc...)

This is not a good privacy oriented design and it exposes users in a dangerous way.

EDIT: About lemvotes.org. I like this site because it makes it obvious how dangerous this really is. For example I accidentally upvoted a really disgusting NSFW post misclicking on my phone. This will forever be visible to the world. I'm a documented pervert now. Good job.

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Someone can spin up an instance and have votes federated to them anyway, so regardless of whether lemvotes exists or not, people can harvest your information.

[-] hansolo@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Which is why you shouldn't put all your interests in one account.

Have one account for memes and shitposts, then another for bringing down the patriarchy and kinky stuff. OK, so maybe 3 accounts

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[-] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I had expected reactions to be encrypted, as it's not a build in feature of Lemmy itself. If it was, I feel like it should have been visible, just like the modlog. There must have been a reason why the Lemmy devs don't show a list of who up votes or down votes

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[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

Please wholly ignore people butthurt about downvotes. We all do. Voting does not warrant any explanation.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's to guard against bot accounts. I'd much rather have that instead of the clearly manipulated comment sections on Reddit. The pro-israel posting and down voting went away almost overnight when we got broader access and a few mods got called out about it. Go look at a comment section about it that hits all on Reddit, there's clearly artificial voting going on.

It's still not that hard to mess around but I'll take what I can get, and I guess it does keep the racists away, even if it's sometimes a false positive like in your case.

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[-] hobovision@mander.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

Up voting for good discussion.

[-] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

Which community/instance did this? I'd like to block it.

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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
22 points (95.8% liked)

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