The very nature of Federation means that all data needs to be openly shared between platforms, so even if there's some info you don't see on your client of choice, assume that every single interaction you have with the platform is public.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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And that's why hornyposting on main is an even worse idea than normal
Unless? ( ˶o˶˶o˶) !! jk jk....
While that is very much true, but I find it debatable if you (as in the dev) want the user facing UI to show it.
But even if platforms agree to not make the data visible, anyone can spin up their own instance and browse through the backend data that is being sent. It's the ActivityPub protocol itself, not the individual platforms that use it.
The main difference is ease, and if you have to spin up your own instance vs just press a button I’d guess most people wouldn’t do it
Most people wouldn’t, but all the ones you need to worry about would.
You've never seen how dedicated trolls and bad actors can get, I see.
Serious question: Why should they be private?
I know they're private on Reddit, but so what? It's not exactly sensitive information, and I can see many benefits to having them be publicly viewable. Namely preventing bot farms or people creating hundreds of alts to upvote their own fresh takes, or downvoting stuff they disagree with into oblivion.
I've always seen it as a shorthand for dropping a comment saying "I agree with this" or "I don't agree with this" which would have your username against it
While this arguably doesn't prevent anything on its own, it might expose what you just said - bot farms and sock puppets.
on Reddit, you used to be able to opt into having your upvotes down on your user page
Copying my own reply from a similar thread last month, the problem is that most users don't know they're public:
I think the issue is that many Lemmy users will think more carefully about what they comment than what they up/downvote, as a comment appears connected to your username but a vote doesn't. You might decide against commenting on something you disagree with because you don't want to get in a fight, instead just downvoting it, but if people then know if was you who downvoted can still pick the fight.
Basically the issue is you're revealing a lot more information than you might initially have realised if you'd have known votes were public all along. Maybe a disgruntled person uses that to dox you, or maybe a corpo feeds all that information into their fancy computer system to work out who you might be, who knows.
And you also have to consider how other platforms treat upvotes and downvotes.
On many platforms, your upvotes and downvotes are not only visible, but sometimes result in a notification alert (i.e. someone commented on your post, someone liked your post, someone downvoted your post, etc.). It is not anonymous at all.
We are in a world where big data is being collected and stored and analyzed by AI for every activity on the Internet, as well as an era of creeping global authoritarianism, and you are confused by why some people might be concerned about leaving an extremely granular, public, and permanent record of how they vote? Or rather, why they might strongly prefer that not be public?
Yes. I do not see how it's any different to the existing extremely granular, public, and permanent record of how they comment, nor why they should be treated differently.
Also, the way the ActivityPub works, that record exists whether or not the general public can see it. Reddit or Fediverse, the creeping global authoritarians can access to that record. At least if the public can see it, and is aware that it's not private, they might think twice about what they vote on, if they're that concerned about it.
I would argue that if you think you're a target to the creepy global authoritarians, what you upvote or downvote on the fediverse should be the least of your concerns. Your comments are far more likely to compromise you than your votes. Yes, as @smeg@feddit.uk points out, if you're upvoting/downvoting things in location specific communities, it might narrow the search field, but that's all the more reason to make people aware that this record isn't private on any platform (right now).
Making it truly private, from what I understand, would require a monumental change to how the fediverse works, and I just don't think it would add enough value to be worth it. We're not talking about elections here. 99% of the time we're talking about wether or not I agree that RA3 was redeemed purely on the fact that it gave us some amazing Tim Curry gifs
Essentially, I just think that making it easily accessible to the general public will do more good than harm, and making it truly private is more effort than it's worth.
I don't buy that it's easier to dox someone on the fediverse than it is on reddit JUST because you can see what they've upvoted, and If you want to be engaging with dangerous political content, you should be protecting your account as a whole and treating everything you do or say as being accessible to bad actors. It's the age old adage: If you want it to stay private, don't put it online
Making it truly private, from what I understand, would require a monumental change to how the fediverse works, and I just don’t think it would add enough value to be worth it.
Piefed does https://piefed.social/post/205362
Huh, that's an interesting approach. It's still not truly private though
The anonymous profile cannot be associated with its controlling account by anyone other than your PieFed instance admin(s).
So it the same situation as Reddit where the record still exists, and you've just got to trust your admins not to sell you out.
If you're truly worried about it to the level the other comments are suggesting, you're still better off treating them as public anyway.
Really my issue is I just cannot wrap my head around why people are treating votes as more sensitive than comments. That's really backwards imho. I think the only people protected by having votes be so private are the people abusing them
who cares, yall are so paranoid about everything, have the self awareness to know that you aren't important, let the corpos dox me and have all my upvote/downvotr information ill survive
Ok, making people aware that they're not private, fine. That should be done, but only really because people are coming from Reddit and expecting them to be private.
if people then know if was you who downvoted can still pick the fight
I think if anyone tried to pick a fight with me over downvoting them, I'd just feel sorry for them for a second before blocking them. Not saying there aren't people like that, but they have to be very far and few between.
Maybe a disgruntled person uses that to dox you, , or maybe a corpo feeds all that information into their fancy computer system to work out who you might be
This seems extremely far fetched to me. If someone is going to dox you, it's going to be from your comments, not because you upvoted something. I just don't buy that. I can't even think of a hypothetical scenario where an up/downvote in isolation could be used to dox someone - feel free to propose one if you can
A hypothetical way to dox someone would be using the extra data available. Maybe they don't comment much about their particular interests, but they upvote stuff in location-specific communities, downvote people expressing a particular ideology, and anything else that would allow a (ridiculously dedicated) bad actor to work our a lot of personal info about them. Unlikely, but theoretically possible.
Also apparently Lemmy votes are marked as private but any software can choose to just ignore that request, which seems pretty open to abuse.
Yeah, back when I first got started on kbin I thought the ability to see who upvoted and downvoted would be a boon to civil discussion on the Fediverse - it meant you couldn't sling mud anonymously. One of the most annoying things on Reddit is debating with someone that's insta-downvoting everything you say. I was saddened when all the major Fediverse clients all got rid of that.
Precision:
- downvotes are only visible on Tesseract to mods of the community
- upvotes have been visible on Mbin forever
I can see upvotes and downvotes.
I can see the list of users that upvoted every post/message.
I used to be able to see a list of users that downvoted. (data is there, just hidden)
So everything you ever upvote/downvote is tracked and everyone can see it at some point.
Your comment history is public, as is your upvote history.
How do you see downvotes? I was only able to see upvotes via this
The "Reduces" button cannot be clicked
It's greyed out only on some instances.
The data still exists if you wrote your own front end, you can look at it.
I used yours in that case, fedia.io
Rewriting front-end should indeed give access to that data, as we know it's already there
I'm just upvoting MLP memes, don't mind me
I personally think public downvotes should be a thing, people would think twice about downvoting unnecessarily.
I believe people should be able to downvote whatever they want. People should be allowed to go against the hivemind. PieFed implements pseudonymous downvoting. For anyone worried about spam, they have powerful tools to allow admins to filter out people who do not contribute to the community, e. g. just go around downvoting everything.
I have no problems with people downvoting stuff. But if you're willing to downvote something, you should be willing to stand by it instead of being anonymous.
Sometimes though there can be cases of harassment based on downvotes. I won't mention no names, but recently I saw someone on Lemmy reveal (with evidence) how they were sent death threats and were harassed for something FAR more petty. If people like that can exist, then I don't even want to imagine what can happen when your disapproval of a person's opinions is public.
Here's the thing. Downvotes ARE public, just with a slightly higher barrier to access. Bad actors like that? Slightly higher barriers aren't an issue, they will walk barefoot over broken glass to mess with you. The issue under consideration here is whether to remove that barrier so normal users (not crazy ones) can access the same info that others can.
There is no such thing as an unnecessary down vote
Allow me to demonstrate
Exactly, thank you for your cooperation.
fuck bronies