Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…

What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

  • FinalFallacy@kbin.social
    858·
    1 year ago

    Isn’t that kind of the point? You don’t get very far hiding in a social setting. You’re on a public website talking to other people. Your posts should be public, comments, etc. At least people should treat all websites or apps they didn’t develop personally like they’re public. I mean you don’t really have a right to privacy in public.

    And I’m not trying to say this with some malicious tone or anything but it’s just my view on it.

    • Album@lemmy.ca
      816·
      1 year ago

      Posts and comments is one thing… It’s inherently public. But I think being able to see up and down vote publically is a tough pill. If you don’t realize your votes can be seen you risk your vote being held against you. If you do know it disincentivizes you to use the vote system to protect yourself from something that should be rather benign.

      • mookulator@lemmy.worldEnglish
        133·
        1 year ago

        At least you know the instance host isn’t selling your data right? The advertisers already have it 🤪

        • mookulator@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          I was kind of joking, but now that I think about it isn’t that better? The problem isn’t really advertisers having your data, it’s companies doing skeezy things to be able to make more money with your data.

          This way, instance hosts are free from that incentive and can just focus on making a good website.

          • mookulator@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I was kind of joking, but now that I think about it isn’t that better? The problem isn’t really advertisers having your data, it’s companies doing skeezy things to be able to make more money with your data.

            This way, instance hosts are free from that incentive and can just focus on making a good website.

      • VlynEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        I mean I didn’t upvote or downvote porn on Reddit either. It’s all personal information.

        On Reddit there were plenty of people with access and the data was sold to advertisers.

        Here it’s public, not great but not terrible either. Also makes it easier to battle vote brigading?

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          It also makes it easier to profile users and weed out anyone who disagrees about literally anything.

          Like, you guys need to consider not every admin is a paragon of virtue.

          • VlynEnglish
            21·
            1 year ago

            But that has always been a thing. Just like Reddit mods banning you from their subreddit just because you posted in another subreddit they didn’t like. It sucks, but it’s nothing new.

            If either a server admin or a community mod doesn’t like you for what you’re doing, they can kick you out. It’s the same as if this was an old time forum and you pissed off the admin.

            With lemmy you have to watch two things:

            1. Trust the instance admin you sign up with, this is where your account data lives, the admin can read everything on your account. Hell, even your password if they manipulated the instance code, so use a random one

            2. Trust the moderators of the communities you interact with. If you interact with a community and the mods there don’t like you, they can just remove your posts for example. Same as with Reddit

            A random person outside of your instance or communities you interact with can’t do much. They can “steal” your posts and comment data and see your votes. But that’s it. They can’t block your account or kick you out of your favorite communities. They could obviously harass you (just your account, not your email), but then you can block them. Or ask the admin to block their entire instance.

    • pistachio
      361·
      1 year ago

      Still unexpected. And that’s the problem.

      Comments are obviously public because I can read them. But there is no “upvoted by xx people (and downvoted by xx)” link I can click to see the list of people who interacted this way with the post. It’s only with API calls or similar that I can access the information.

      • rideranton@kbin.social
        7·
        1 year ago

        kbin has the ability to see activity including upvotes, boosts, and downvotes from the UI for entries, comments, and microblogs

          • Kaldo@kbin.social
            3·
            1 year ago

            The same data is also there on lemmy, there just isn’t an UI element to display it. That’s why op said admins can see it, but on Kbin users can too.

    • pistachio
      44·
      1 year ago

      Still unexpected. And that’s the problem.

      Comments are obviously public because I can read them. But there is no “upvoted by xx people (and downvoted by xx)” link I can click to see the list of people who interacted this way with the post. It’s only with API calls or similar that I can access the information.