this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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You're right, it wouldn't be questions about why the downvote so much as just straight insults probably. I'm too hesitatant to use that sort of language so I didn't represent the type of message properly.
So the primary argument for why public downvotes are beneficial is that it helps prevent spam-infuencing posts and comments? Is this then not more of a problem with bot detection? And just how easy is it really to "just spin up an instance and fill it with sock puppet accounts"?
I don't know that I'd call it the primary argument, just an argument. And containerization makes hosting your own lemmy instance trivial.
Personally, if it makes people a little more judicious about applying a downvote, maybe that's a good thing.
What would you say is the primary argument?
I don't know by what metric I'd even use to quantify that. Why do you need one?
To form an opinion I like to hear arguments from both sides. I can come up with my own arguments as to why public downvotes might be bad (anonymous voting is a cornerstone of democracy, hidden votes makes engagement easier for socially shy individuals, aforementioned harassment), but I have a harder time finding its positives.
This isn't meant to be combative; I have tried thinking about ways I would use this information (apart from reporting bot spam) and none of them would add anything positive to my experience using the platform. If anything it could lead me to be unhealthily obsessed with checking activity for who upvotes and downvotes me. My experience doesn't equate to everyone though, so I'm curious to hear another perspective. I might very well be missing something big.
My question was more along the lines of "why do you need to label any given reason as a 'primary' argument". You've already been given counter-points.
I think that if you're concerned about this, you should seek out an instance that both does not federate downvotes and does not display the downvote button. Then you will be unable to downvote, and you won't see any downvotes from other instances.
But I think downvotes are an important part of how the sorting for a platform such as this operates and it helps deal with spam, off-topic posts and shitposting in serious communities etc.
I'm not against downvotes, I just don't see the benefit to publicly accessible data on who voted for what.
Have you stopped to think about how that works in practice? If I downvote something on kbin (where I am now) and it federates to feddit.nu, how does that work without also knowing my username? As I think I already saw someone point out to you, stripping out that information would make it very easy to send unlimited downvotes to any given instance, because it would just be a counter of downvotes without a user associated with it.
The only reason downvotes were "anonymous" on reddit was because it was closed source and didn't federate that information to other services. The downvote was still linked to your account, just obscured; Reddit admins could certainly see what you downvoted. This tactic won't work on any platform that uses ActivityPub, or something similar, without getting rid of downvotes entirely. It's probably best you get accustomed to this; treat it as you would a comment that says "I think people should see less of this" or something equivalent.
Well yes of course, I have never assumed otherwise, and this was never about that.
The truly dedicated can't be stopped, but most people aren't going to spin up their own instance to check who downvoted them. So you end up reducing the potential amount of harassment.
I still don't feel like I understand the benefits from easy access to voting info. The downside is that it makes life easy for trolls, stalkers and people of that nature. What's the upside?
All it takes is one person to spin up one instance.
You never actually showed how it made life easier for trolls and stalkers.
I'm just looking to understand the benefits of completely transparent public voting so I can weigh them against the downsides. That's how I like to form - or change - opinions.
Saying that trying to hide voting data is meaningless because it's impossible to hide completely anyway does not answer why public votes are good, it just tries to invalidate the question.
I'm looking for the completion of the sentence "I like that everyone is able to see who up/downvotes them because __"
Let's say I browse a news or politics related community on /New. Someone publishes an incendiary post that nevertheless skirts the rules such that it isn't within the grounds to report. I downvote it because it's not the type of content I want on that community. That person spends a single mouseclick to find me and sends me a hostile DM and/or goes and retaliation-downvotes everything on my profile. It's not a difficult situation to imagine.
You can't hand wave away the technical limitations like that. If you want downvotes, and you appear to want them, and you want to be on a federated system, and it appears you do, then the federation will require linking downvotes to users.
Downvotes aren't an outwardly anonymous way to show disagreement like they were used on Reddit. They're like a comment of disagreement. If someone harasses you for downvotes, report them. And block them. Just as you would if they did so for a comment you left.
I like that voting is public because it makes voting (up or down) a public statement. If I look at a person's voting history and see upvotes on racist comments and downvotes of well thought out comments I can know with some certainty that I can disregard the opinions of that person. Further, it might make people more thoughtful about what they vote on.
Well yes. They can still be made more or less easily accessible.
That's what I was looking for, thank you. I can definitely understand that perspective.
I definitely hope I'm wrong and this won't be an issue as Kbin grows its user base.
Only on a server by server basis. The data is being transmitted and received. If a server decides to hide that info, that doesn't necessarily mean that other ActivityPub compatible services will also hide it, let alone services running the same software.
You just need to get used to the idea that a vote is as much a pubic statement as a comment, and act accordingly.
Now? A bit troublesome. Soon enough, as the tooling improves? Trivial.
You don't even need to spin up a Lemmy instance specifically. There's some very small script-driven ActivityPub servers already showing up that can be used for this kind of activity with ease if you've got a minor amount of technical chops. Give it a few months and someone will have turnkeyed an ActivityPub harassment engine.