Hmm, yeah, I don't like this at all. I can see some benefits but I really don't want to have to worry about what I'm voting on. If I downvote some lunatic I don't want them being able to harass me about it. And it feels way too social-media-y for me. This could be a dealbreaker for a lot of people if there isn't at least a way to opt out.
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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I agree on all points especially about the social media feel. I don't want instagram or facebook where it shows so and so liked/disliked/reacted to something.
I think this forces something that nobody paid attention to in Reddiquete, which was that if you don't like something, you just shouldn't vote on it. Downvotes were supposed to be for when something actively didn't belong, not just something you didn't agree with. Of course, another way to do that would be to just get rid of the Reduce button entirely.
I mainly used downvotes on trolls and other bad-faith comments, people just being purposefully annoying in the comments. Exactly the kind of people I don't want to engage with, just downvote and move on.
The fediverse is always ahead on things like moderation, so I don't forsee downvote harassers becoming a thing here. Eventually, you'll be able to easily block/report/ban them.
I'm not even sure allowing an opt out would be technically feasible without some big work. Your votes have to be sent to other servers to keep counts consistent and you can't control whether that server shows or hides votes. So any option you set on your own instance won't have an effect outside your instance.
Apart from the issue of harassers, I don't see a good reason for hiding votes. Showing votes might help prevent brigades or similar vote harassment (e.g. user always downvotes another user they don't like).
I'm still figuring out how this works. Does Lemmy also make your votes public? It doesn't seem to me like it does (though I may be wrong) and that's part of the fediverse too, no?
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@jake_eric I see the opposite. Making votes and especially downvotes private facilitates a kind of micro-harassement by individuals or organized groups.
I see where you're coming from, but on the flip side, I think it empowers the bad-faith trolls who have way too much time and energy to get into fights. On Reddit, if I see someone just being a general asshole, I'll downvote and move on. If that person can see that I've done that, I'm not gonna feel as comfortable doing that, lest they retaliate somehow.
You could turn it around and say that it empowers non-asshole users to fight back as well, but the assholes tend to have more energy to get into fights, that's part of the reason why they're being assholes online in the first place.
I can tell you I've absolutely never wished Reddit votes were shared knowledge. Even if it would occasionally be useful information, it's just not worth it for me.
I need to remember this. I don't want to upvote NSFW content and have all my kinks publically attached to this username.
I had a friend once who was seemingly unaware that Instagram made all his likes public. It was entertaining enough, but maybe not ideal from his perspective. It felt like I ended up knowing him a little better than I really wanted to.
Hard disagree on the idea that upvote/downvote history being displayed constantly is a good thing - it seems like it's just inviting harassment. Should be opt-out at a minimum, and preferably opt-in.
In a small community it's probably fine; but it will get super toxic with big communities or abusive mods.
This is where I see there being an issue as well.
There's also potential for harassment due to people seeing opposing political opinions. As an example - My wife was once the target of harassment by a number of users on Reddit for days for warning people about an anti-abortion protest that was displaying graphic imagery. Much easier for those kind of people to coordinate harassment of others if they can easily see records of upvoting pro-choice or downvoting anti-choice posts/comments.
I understand what you're saying, but in the broader scheme of the internet we should have the ability to dictate what of our data and actions get broadcast and therefore able to be mined by advertisers or other nefarious entities. This is actually a hugely important idea in fighting the corporatization of the internet. We need to stop letting mega corps build profiles on us based on our clicks.
I totally agree, but I find it refreshing to make people accountable. Maybe there is a solution to keep it somehow private between users?
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Some people don't understand the implications of making the votes public.
Any tool like "Kbin enhancement suite" will quickly scan for who downvoted you and will allow you to track the person who disrespected you by downvoting you. It won't be "micro-harassement", it will be wide scale, automated harassment, systematic retaliation. An active hate list, basically. Imagine the equivalent of a "the_donald" centralizing a database of the people to downvote or harass based on their public vote.
I think the best course of action is to no vote at all as long as the votes are not secret.
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my god, the most exhausting people online are gonna love this
can’t wait to get harassed cause I won’t dEbAtE why I clicked the “your post is garbage” button and cite sources that aren’t my eyes or rising bile
Its fediverse. The only way to verify upvotes and downvotes and limit them to 1 per user is for there to be a record. The only way to avoid that situation is to not Federate upvotes/downvotes.
Being concerned about boosts is literally a misunderstanding of what a boost is. The purpose of a boost is to mimic retweet functionality. It's to share that same thing with all of your followers. It would serve no purpose if it weren't public.
One platform can hide them, but others would still be able to see them so someone with bad intentions could still just look it up somewhere else
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