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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

For starters datamining my voting patterns for building a deeper interest profile. It should be pretty obvious how this works in terms of user fingerprinting, and the ultimate monetization of Lemmy data. It would be super naive to think that Lemmy will be the one web space immune to this kind of thing. I guarantee you meta already has an army of silent instances doing this.

Worst case scenario, legit state actors use it to target deanonymization attacks at dissidents. I would not be shocked if the ...usual suspects... Are engaged in this kind of thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

datamining my voting patterns for building a deeper interest profile.

They can already datamine your posts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But not my votes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If I understand correctly they already can. It's not user-facing, but votes are federated if I understand correctly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, that is why I am arguing in favor of an additional layer of pseudonymous voting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Incorporating that in a way that doesn't allow for vote manipulation by just lying to a server that different "anonymous" users have up or down voted a post sounds incredibly difficult, and not worth it for the narrow use case of "prevent my votes from being data mined even though all my comments can."