this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Lemmy votes ARE public, should they be anonymous? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/fediverse
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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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[–] Asidonhopo 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

If votes became truly public, what would stop a malicious user from automating crawling the fediverse to get a list of every up and down vote a targeted user has ever made? Admins can currently do this, I assume given enough time and intent? Yuck.

I really hope a solution is found and if Lemmy goes the way of truly public votes, it would probably turn this into a nonparticipatory medium for me, I'd still read posts but not vote or comment.

Edit: also, most casual Lemmy users aren't aware of public votes and would be upset that it already works this way, and only particularly invested or curious users are even reading this thread.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

If votes became truly public

There's no 'if', they already are.

what would stop a malicious user from automating crawling the fediverse to get a list of every up and down vote a targeted user has ever made?

The same thing currently stopping them: nothing but time and effort.

Admins can currently do this, I assume given enough time and intent? Yuck.

No, anybody can currently do this.

That's the issue with decentralisation. The info is out there. It's that or trust a megacorp with it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

There's nothing stopping a malicious user from doing that right now. Be aware that anyone who wants can already see your votes.