this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023

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YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private (i.imgur.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/youshouldknow

1079 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...

What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

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[–] v81 1 points 1 year ago

Your choice of wording is driving me take you less seriously. You sound passionate though so I'll explain.

Actively worse? Your use of of the word active implies that something deliberately malicious is happening. It's not the case, this issue is a side effect of how lemmy works. It is an issue, it is a concern and it does need addressing, but your hyperbole is unwarranted.
Lemmy isn't selling anything... it's a piece of software. This is the most false and malicious claim you've made. If our data were to be used nefariously then it would be the actions of a rouge server admin.

The definition of privacy is somewhat flexible. Nothing is private unless end to end encryption is employed. And nothing like lemmy can work with end to end encryption. So there is the dilemma. Yes it sucks... yes voting should be private. How about you propose a solution? Because at this point, outside of shutting everything down there is none.

The technical fact is the software must be able to reference data in a database to then create this page you are viewing, this text you are reading and the votes you are seeing.

Possible lemmy / server side solution...

remove voting
remove accounting of voting (this can't really work as without connecting a vote to a user, any user can upvote or down vote something unlimited times.

Possible user side solution... Don't vote Simply not participating in voting means there is no voting data tied to you; and this is, believe it or not an actual valid solution if you are concerned.

Ultimately for lemmy to work some tradeoffs are required. I do agree that where there is some gain to be made, someone will abuse the system, I'm not naive enough to say there is no problem here... there is. It's just that yelling at the wall isn't going to fix it. I've exhausted myself trying to think of a solution, and the only real and workable solution i can think of is as i said above, that voting be removed, or that you simply don't participate in voting.

So if you're really concerned and want an immediate solution effective for you then don't vote on anything ever. I'm not saying this to be a prick, but as a piece of legitimate advice. If no vote data exists for you then no one can harvest your voting preferences.