this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Lemmy

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Should Mastodon votes be federated into Lemmy? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I am concerned that Mastodon's unary-vote system (favorites), and Lemmy's binary-vote system (upvotes with downvotes) are mutually exclusive.

In a unary-vote system, a post's vote count generally has little use beyond expressing the post's absolute popularity/engagement, whereas, in a binary vote system, a post's vote count can be used to gauge opinions, such as its level of quality, trust, or agreement. This difference in usage makes me concerned that the votes federated from Mastodon will water down the votes originating from Lemmy.

Currently, I can think of two possible solutions to this:

  1. Lemmy de-federates any votes originating from Mastodon (might be tricky as it would rely on all instances following suit)
  2. Add an option for the user to toggle within their settings allowing them to toggle off non-binary votes.
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

i thought the protocol allows for all 3... upvotes, downvotes and 'likes'

there would be no overlap on a technical level. they are already completely compatible, even if its not fully implemented. kbin/mbin call this 'boost'

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Interestingly, lemmy and Kbin votes were originally incompatible. Lemmy saw nothing from Kbin (because Kbin upvotes were boosts), Kbin saw Lemmy upvotes as favorites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

they swapped this over the summer to gain compatibility.

i hoping was ernest would add the option for downvotes., but he has not. I dont appreciate devs making decisions for admins, and it would be nice if more of the protocol was represented as at least optional.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

i thought the protocol allows for all 3… upvotes, downvotes and ‘likes’

Do you have a source for that, by chance? From what I can see in the documentation for the ActivityPub protocol, it only states:

6.8 Like Activity

The Like activity indicates the actor likes the object.

The side effect of receiving this in an outbox is that the server SHOULD add the object to the actor's liked Collection.

There doesn't appear to be any other client to server interactions for different types of likes. Afaik, Lemmy extended the ActivityPub protocol to add the downvote.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

nope, you were rigt, i was wrong.

mastodon likes -> 'bin boosts

lemmy upvotes -> 'bin upvotes lemmy likes/shares -> 'bin boosts lemmy downvotes -> fuckin nowhere

i am kinda disappointed, to be honest. i want all 3.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

In mastodon, a "boost" is sharing a post. Maybe that's the 3rd option and mastodons likes are upvotes?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Lemmy's upvotes are same thing as likes, and downvotes are dislikes. This is kinda hard to tell because Mastodon doesn't federate likes, so Lemmy posts will always show up as having no favourites.