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.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    844·
    1 month ago

    Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?

    I’m not sure if there is a good way to have the content federate anonymously. Even if there was, it would be a vector for spam.

    Vote manipulation is a growing problem on Reddit. It’s only getting worse with all the AI spam bots and they don’t have an incentive to stop it. Why trust a review on Reddit if bots are upvoting/downvoting on behalf of a company, or worse what happens in news communities when a well funded group wants to change perspectives.

    Admins need to know if the votes/likes coming in are legitimate, else they should block them. It’s too easy to abuse anonymous votes to affect how content is ranked.

    I left a long comment in the other thread which I will link in a moment, but I think either

    1. We keep the current setup, but we put in more effort to make new users aware that vote records are visible to admins/mods
    2. We make it public for everyone and take steps to deal with the new issues that it could cause

    Other comment on the benefits/issues: https://lemmy.ca/comment/11097046

    • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
      29·
      1 month ago

      Admins need to know if the votes/likes coming in are legitimate, else they should block them. It’s too easy to abuse anonymous votes to affect how content is ranked.

      This is a very real problem right now. Admins that are on to it use the votes to identify swarms of users that follow each other around upvoting each other’s spam/troll posts.

    • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
      19·
      1 month ago

      I will also add that I think in the long run, as we try to figure out how to differentiate between humans and machines, the only real reliably solution I see is to focus on elevating the individual. Having people with long histories validate their reality by living and documenting it.

      I don’t upvote something that I’d be ashamed for someone to see I upvote. I might make an exception for pornographic content, but even with that, if it’s pseudononymous in that it’s not attached to my personal public life, I don’t mind if someone can trace through and see what a specific account I use for those purposes has liked and disliked.