YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private
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.
Is this only accessible for the people who host the instance, or for all users?
Anybody with access to the database on ANY instance. It would be pretty easy to surface in the UI if someone was so inclined to code it.
Kbin was so inclined. You can see who interacted with any post and how they did right from the default UI.
There's been lots of discussion of this on kbin. I tend to like it. I think it encourages people to stop and think 'why' before they downvote things - compared to Reddit, where people tended to downvote thoughtlessly and often, and which contributed to a culture on some subs that was quite toxic.
Ironically Kbin might be the place where people will follow the downvote reddiquette correctly, something that almost never happened in Reddit itself:
Please don't downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it. Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons.
So if we don’t like it . . . don’t . . downvote it?
Isn’t that, y’know, what the downvote’s for?
That’s cornfusing.
No, that's never what downvotes were for. It's not a 'disagree' button. It's just that Reddit got a bit toxic as it grew and the masses started treating it that way.
No? The votes are for what contributes (or not) to a conversation, and deepens the dialogue.
That's why it's infuriating when someone is downvoted when they have an unpopular but well-structured opinion, while a one-liner joke gets a million upvotes.
I'll probably be a lot less likely to downvote here, just because if something is so inflammatory that I'd want to, I probably don't want to draw their attention to me anyway. But I'm glad to know early on.
Everyone, on kbin u can see who boosted , downvoted/reduced, or upvote/favourited any comment by pressing "more" then "activity". For posts it's at the bottom of the comment section