Lemmy Support

are you saying that it’s weird that lemmy users can’t see the votes, or that kbin users can?

i’d agree that it’s weird that lemmy users can’t see votes, however i can see the argument:

people have said that their votes should be private, and that if votes can’t be private (let’s make that assumption for the moment because that’s the way the core communication of the network works) then at least it shouldn’t be trivial to get access to that information

that’s a valid position to take

the counter is that if the information is public, simply making it slightly more difficult to access only hurts the people who wouldn’t use that information for nefarious purposes anyway… and by hiding the information, you simply make people less aware that the information is actually public!

lemmy users tend to be unaware that votes are public information, whilst kbin users seem to have more of an understanding of that. i’d say that knowledge helps people act accordingly

there’s also the “let’s change the protocol so votes are truly private” discussion, which is also valid but a far bigger effort, and is also against some of the values of the fediverse (that everything is transparent)