Currently, almost anyone in the Fediverse can see Lemmys votes. Lemmy admins can see votes, as well as mods. Only regular Lemmy users can't. Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?

There is a discussion going on right now considering "making the Lemmy votes public" but I think that premisse is just wrong. The votes are public already, they're just hidden from Lemmy users. Anyone from a kbin/mbin/fedia instance can check out the votes if they are so inclined.

The users right now may fall into a false sense of privacy when voting because the votes are hidden from Lemmy users. If you want to vote something and not show up on the vote list, please create another account to support that type of content and don't tell anyone.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I always thought anonymous voting was preferable, or at least non-public. I don't want "why did you downvote me bro!?"-arguments to occur, and I don't want to know who approves of my comments or not. I think thinking of votes as an amorphous blob representing general public opinion on Lemmy is preferable to getting into the weeds of who exactly likes your posts and comments.

We could also have "karma" on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

If botting becomes enough of an issue that regular users need to report vote manipulation bots I'll be fine with conceding my stance.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (2 children)

As a comment on the other discussion says, there's a reason ballots are secret.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

In reality you should be able to get an anonymized reference number to show your vote was tabulated correctly though.

Right now it comes down to an actual official finding your paper ballot with hand marked tracking and presuming the computer read it correctly on an overall vote total.

Being able to do this anonymously and securely is where the problems lie. Which is also why digital only voting still isn't a thing anywhere.

[–] MolochAlter 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In reality you should be able to get an anonymized reference number to show your vote was tabulated correctly though.

The reason there is no such thing in elections, is to prevent vote buying/extortion.

In Italy it's such an extreme problem that any ballot where the party is not marked with a cross on the party logo and (if present) a block capital name next to it on the provided line, is automatically discounted, because stuff like writing a name a specific way or using crosses, checks, dots, or other symbols was used to track vote buying/voter intimidation in mafia controlled territories.

Some vote counters and polling station overseers would be on the take and keep track of if the votes they expected to see showed up when counting ballots and report back.

If you were able in any way to prove something beyond the equivalent of an "I voted" sticker it would immediately be used to ensure people voted a certain way or to exact some sort of backlash on those who didn't.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago

I agree. As long as anonymous voting doesn't cause obvious trolling/spam issues, it should be preferred.

One of the reasons I've always found Facebook off-putting and never used it (even before learning about the shady practices) are the very visible votes. I tend to overanalyse any reaction and would judge people based on their votes on my posts, even if I consciously tried to avoid it. Similarly, I imagine some other people would do the same and I'd feel like I'm under surveillance.

[–] Quetzalcutlass 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We could also have "karma" on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

It's strange that they removed total account karma visibility a while back but are now thinking about making votes public.

I think a good compromise (since Lemmy already tracks that data) would have been to show the upvote/downvote ratio a user receives on their profile page, without showing their total karma. That'd help you spot toxic users without incentivising karma whoring.

Similarly, a display of how often a user upvotes versus downvotes others would help spot bots and trolls without completely obliterating privacy like their suggestion would.

(But ultimately none of this solves the problem of privacy on the Fediverse being one federated bad actor away from nonexistence)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It honestly just opens up a whole shitty can of worms. Are admins ready to weigh in every time someone fakes a vote history screenshot showing that so and so up voted a bomb threat before the post got removed?