Lemmy devs are considering making all votes public - have your say

github.com [Discussion] Should votes be displayed publicly? · Issue #4967 · LemmyNet/lemmy

Question I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on possibly making votes public. This has been discussed in a lot of other issues, but here's a dedicated one for discussion. Positives Could help figh...

Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967

askchapo @hexbear.net

Lemmy devs are looking to make votes public. Thoughts?

github.com /LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967

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Ok, yeah, theoretically.
But we're talking about putting voting info into the UI for anyone to see. Not highly motivated and skilled bad actors.
- And the "we should not make it available for the public at large because it will lead to abuse" is also theoretical.
  Anyway, I'm already on record saying that I don't like the voting system and that we should get rid of it altogether. Voting on content used to be about collective curation, not a constant popularity contest.
  I'm also on record saying that we need to stop relying on systems that only give us the illusion of privacy and depend on the software developers for culture shaping.
  If making the vote public gets people to be exposed to these fundamental issues of the current design, and leads us to search for better solutions, then I'm all for it.
  
  It's not theoretical to se how people consistently behave when there's less friction for toxic behavior. You should look into it if you're not already aware of the very predictable negative outcomes that stem from removing those frictions.
  
  I mean in the specific case of "giving vote visibility to everyone will cause more harassment based on who-voted-on-what". It's theoretical because this has not been implemented yet.
  
  Except that it plainly obvious that it's a reduction in friction for doing so and therefore will increase the behavior.
  
  I've addressed this in another comment. At first, it's quite likely that we'd see an increase in behavior. But the way to correct this would be by reporting "serial downvoters" and brigaders to moderators, which could then be empowered to enforce "don't downvote just because you disagree" guidelines.
  Hackernews, for all its faults, does this very well. Their moderation team is quite small, yet it rarely falls into screaming matches between users. Their guidelines are clear and let people understand what is/is not acceptable. Mods are rarely seen threatening to ban someone, but often calling out bad behavior and simply asking people to stop doing whatever they are doing before it escalates further.
  
  We've already seen that kind of harrasment on major platforms including X and those owned by Meta.
  
  This feels a bit of a conversation-shutting argument. Lots of things (good and bad) will happen on a platform that has billions of users. The real question is to about many of those instances happened solely due to the data being (easily) available to the public.
  In any case, I really don't think that the solution to the problem of targeted harassment is by providing quote-unquote-privacy. Today, people want to obfuscate votes. Tomorrow it will be subscription lists and later it will be even posts/comments. By then it will be better to just use a closed network or just go full darknet. I'd rather we spent more time educating the people on how to use actually secure and private communications platform instead of sacrificing Transparency and Accountability for the sake of a vocal minority who will keep trying to turn the "Open Social Web" (which is meant to be open and public) into their exclusive, cocooned service.
  
  That's because it's supposed to be. I was on Reddit for a decade until their management shit the bed, and these kinds of problems weren't a thing there despite the much larger userbase.
  For the record, to me it's less about privacy and more about setting expectations. I'm not anonymous online, I'm pseudonymous, I've had this handle for a long time. I am my online identity, and when I post and vote I don't feel anonymous, even if I'm relatively protected from someone knocking on my door or messaging my boss about a statement.
  If voting "ledgers" aren't presented in the discussion, that's because they aren't intended to be part of the discussion. This reduces the value of influential individuals votes (ooh Bill Gates liked X, Kamala Harris disliked Y etc.) and shifts focus to how the community values of the content. It’s the same reason that we follow communities rather than individuals. We get an internet "hive mind" of sorts without cult of personality.
  
  These specific kinds of things were not a problem, yet it didn't stop the mob from doxxing people "by mistake", getting the police breaking into people homes based on false allegations or getting people fired over something stupid that was said years ago...
  If this is about "expectations" of privacy, then it would be better to just expect the worst always and only write/post/share things when you are 100% sure you don't mind them being ever attributed to you.
  
  Expectations of what is part of the discussion, not expectations of privacy.
  As for doxxing, that's a problem with all social media - but possibly worse on the "regular" ones (people having mobs attacking their houses, being arrested in countries with censorship laws etc.)
  
  shifts focus to how the community values of the content.
  Ok, I think I get your point, but I can tell you that in my experience is the exact opposite:
  The hivemind effect is strong, and a lot perfectly-acceptable content gets up/downvoted by people just because the score is already high/low.
  I have been posting quite a bit since I joined Lemmy in the different niche communities from the instances that I run. Invariably I see downvotes from people who are not subscribers. I've sent DMs to some of them asking what was wrong with the post, and the answer was simply "this is not interesting to me". I replied saying "Look, this isn't Reddit. There is no algorithm. If you are not interested in the content from this community either block it or don't browse by all". Their response was a basic "how dare you tell me how to browse Lemmy?!" Unsurprisingly, when I tried to bring this up for general discussion, I was mass downvoted for the majority that thinks that "downvotes-as-disagreement" is okay..
  So, yeah... In my view, for better or worse votes are part of the conversation. If people were using votes as a valid filter for content quality, I'd totally agree with you. If there is a mass of people downvoting a comment or post that seems to be aligned with the community's values, I feel like I should know why about the comment is deserving of the downvotes. At the very least, I think it's important to know who is downvoting for legitimate reasons and who is downvoting just because they are a whiny brat that should be ignored/muted/blocked.
  
  I agree that it would be better if people used votes as a marker of quality, but strongly disagree on moderation action based on voting.
  Personally, there's three scenarios when I use downvotes w/o commenting:
  Someone has already voiced the reason
  I don't have time/energy to comment
  The target is a censored echo-chamber that will ban anyone who disagrees (can't vote/show disapproval if you're banned) - example would be .ml communities having moments about how stalinist USSR did nothing wrong.
  Anyway, once a post from a community rises sufficiently to pop up on all, it becomes a part of the larger discussion, and voting will shift towards the opinions of the larger fediverse. This is also usually when communities get discovered by more people. If a community doesn't want the engagement of the wider user-base, a closed blog may be more suitable as a forum, or alternatively have an instance w/o downvoting.
  When browsing all or new I do so both to break out of my bubble and to vote on content (usually stuff I find interesting).
  
  Yeah, unfortunately it seems that I am in the minority when it comes to how this "should" be used. I genuinely believe that one of the reasons that open platforms are better is because it's not designed to constantly get me engaged. If they are not meant to keep me constantly engaged, then I shouldn't be repeating/missing the behaviors that were learned when using the more addictive platforms. This means:
  Browsing by all is a fundamental mistake. No sane person should be trying to drink from the firehose. It doesn't matter that the firehose is "small" compared to the larger networks. If this network is out of interesting content, then either go elsewhere (and maybe share what you find here) or just close the app and move on.
  If a community/instance/person is not open to a healthy discussion, it's better to just block/mute/defederate and move on.
  If I don't have "time/energy to comment", then just take a break and move on.
  This is why you'll never see me commenting on stuff like politics/news. Not only I find these discussions boring beyond belief, I feel like they are completely pointless. These places serve only as a "two minutes hate" type of thing. No amount of voting/commenting/arguing will ever change anyone's minds.
  
  the illusion of privacy
  i am from the post usenet and pre facebook internet generation (i hope that is vague enough) so using my real name on the internet or signing up for accounts with my real name email acount is strictly verboten by indoctrination, so my opinion may be out of date or invalid somehow, but i can not see how your lemmy account's up or down voting history violates privacy in any meaningful way
- It's in the mbin ui already
  
  So the technical-skill-bar is transforming a lemmy link into the equivalent on an mbin instance? That is huge.

847 comments