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Private voting has been added to PieFed (piefed.social)

submitted 2 months ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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We had a really interesting discussion yesterday about voting on Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin and whether they should be private or not, whether they are already public and to what degree, if another way was possible. There was a widely held belief that votes should be private yet it was repeatedly pointed out that a quick visit to an Mbin instance was enough to see all the upvotes and that Lemmy admins already have a quick and easy UI for upvotes and downvotes (with predictable results ). Some thought that using ActivityPub automatically means any privacy is impossible (spoiler: it doesn't).

As a response, I’m trying this out: PieFed accounts now have two profiles within them - one used for posting content and another (with no name, profile photo or bio, etc) for voting. PieFed federates content using the main profile most of the time but when sending votes to Mbin and Lemmy it uses the anonymous profile. The anonymous profile cannot be associated with its controlling account by anyone other than your PieFed instance admin(s). There is one and only one anonymous profile per account so it will still be possible to analyze voting patterns for abuse or manipulation.

ActivityPub geeks: the anonymous profile is a separate Actor with a different url. The Activity for the vote has its “actor” field set to the anonymous Actor url instead of the main Actor. PieFed provides all the usual url endpoints, WebFinger, etc for both actors but only provides user-provided PII for the main one.

That’s all it is. Pretty simple, really.

To enable the anonymous profile, go to https://piefed.social/user/settings and tick the ‘Vote privately’ checkbox. If you make a new account now it will have this ticked already.

This will be a bit controversial, for some. I’ll be listening to your feedback and here to answer any questions. Remember this is just an experiment which could be removed if it turns out to make things worse rather than better. I've done my best to think through the implications and side-effects but there could be things I missed. Let's see how it goes.

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[-] Jilanico@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Interesting solution 👍 Curious to see how this plays out!

[-] indomara@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

I missed the discussion on voting the other day it seems, but for what it's worth, I like the voting system. In real life discussions happen in open air, and don't hang there in posterity for people to stumble upon after. When we come to a consensus in conversation it is then left at that and we move on.

When online, these discussions stay as they are, and I think voting gives a way of people to come to a consensus, to leave a mark upon the conversation such that the people who come behind understand how everyone felt about it.

This is helpful I think, because it does not hide the down votes on nasty comments or ideas that hurt others.

One of the most interesting and horrible things about the internet is that every village has a "crazy Bob" but because they were the minority the good of the people outnumbered their outlandish or hateful ideas.

Now they can and do find each other online, forming a vocal and damaging minority. Without the majority able to show their dislike, human nature means more will fall in line with them and their ideals.

[-] Ice@piefed.social 7 points 2 months ago

That's super cool and amazing that you implemented it so quickly.

So now I have a PieFed account :)

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 7 points 2 months ago

How does this work with moderation? I.e. what happens if I ban the real user from a Lemmy instance? What if I ban the alternate user?

Also, what happens if on Piefed, a user votes for something, then they change the setting and then they vote for the same thing again? How would a Lemmy instance know if it should count the vote or not, since the original user didn't actually vote from Lemmy's point of view?

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[-] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago

I'm surprised most people are against public votes. Most people already seem to have an anonymous account via some weird username not connected to their real identity already. What difference does it make that votes can be viewed, other than for transparency during discussion?

Maybe I'm the odd one out that uses my real name on the Internet and generally try to behave/vote the same as I would in person, but it seems weird wanting a hybrid account that's private (votes), yet not private (comments).

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[-] light@noc.social 4 points 2 months ago

@rimu is there a forum style ap implementation that can talk to lemmy communities (I'm assuming that piefed can) without voting?

[-] rimu@piefed.social 3 points 2 months ago

Not that I know of.

You could achieve this by installing a Lemmy, PieFed or Mbin instance (whichever you find easiest to install and customise), in the admin area set the sorting options to a sensible default ("New", or "Active", perhaps) and then add a small snippet of CSS that hides the voting information.

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[-] cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago

Is it possible to double vote this way (once on each account)? On second thought, would it even matter? A malicious actor could have multiple accounts.

[-] andrew_s@piefed.social 6 points 2 months ago

No, the other account isn't something you can log into or interact with. PieFed knows whether I've already voted on something, so it won't let me vote again by changing the 'vote privately' setting.

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Regarding the voting account having no name, does that mean it will be a random string of letters and numbers? I get that it will still be possible to discover vote manipulation or mass downvoting with that, but I suspect it would be more difficult to detect initially or without some deeper analysis, since it's harder to recognize or remember a random string compared to a human made username.

[-] andrew_s@piefed.social 3 points 2 months ago

Random string, yeah, like https://piefed.social/u/WYJH5o7OGkbgtxA

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 months ago

Ah, that's unfortunate. As an alternative, I have seen some online games name their bots with a random name generator that's designed to sound somewhat real, like AnnoyingPidgen or WrecklessRaptor. If the voting account naming system was more like that, it would be easier to notice voting patterns/manipulation while still being anonymous.

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[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 4 points 2 months ago

So I've been thinking about this and I would go for a different approach.

Admins can set voting to be public or private on a server wide level.

When users vote, a key is created as the userid

The votes table is essentially: voteid, postid, userid, timestamp, salt, public

If the vote is private, userid is salt(userid, password)

And it's that simple.

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[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 2 months ago

Cool solution!

[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is excellent.

I'm curious about piefed now. Is it free of any explicit agenda?

[-] rimu@piefed.social 6 points 2 months ago

Well.... Take a look at this https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/

There are definitely values and opinions embedded in there. I would say it's a bit more "high control" vibe than lemm.ee. If you chose that instance because of it's more libertarian ethos then perhaps some of the features PieFed have would seem sinister or irrelevant to you.

The code of conduct for contributors is pretty vanilla IMO but would be seen as "left wing" by people from USA.

If you look in the sidebar of https://piefed.social you'll see a random collection of links (they change every page refresh) which are intentionally chosen to combat extremist ideologies and make PieFed instances uncomfortable places for cult-like groups (mostly on the right). That's a political decision which few projects would make.