I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don’t really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from “How” to “Why” because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

  • Aeri@lemmy.world
    47·
    14 hours ago

    I just block anyone who confronts me about why I voted a certain way. “Because I felt like it, fuck off cunt” is my go-to justification.

  • NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world
    10·
    15 hours ago

    If you want to maintain some sort of privacy when voting on any platform in the Fediverse:
    Create an alt account, do not make any posts/comments with it, only use it for voting.

    Otherwise we would need an instance that generates a bunch of voting accounts. Then, when you vote on something, the instance randomly assigns that vote to one of their voting accounts and sends out that vote information to other instances. Then only the Admins of your home instance would be able to view your voting history.

  • Cherry@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    21 hours ago

    It’s a hard feeling to take but it’s a free place. I have no qualm with the comments however the topic you are posting on, is a devisive one and I agree with it’s not clear if it’s about the actual date or First Nations rights so there seems to be a few conversations going on at the same time. I am personally in the camp of always was always will be, but I think removing or changing the date will just cause more tension.

    Dont let this sour lemmy for you. It’s just a day on the internet.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      21 hours ago

      In this case, the post popped into my “all” feed. I have no idea about neither sides, but I down voted on the design of the poster, for not making this clear. I may be a design freak, to down vote on something like this, just based on that, but getting wrapped into a discussion about being racist just because of a down vote feels quite extreme

      • Cherry@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        20 hours ago

        Yeh it’s a heated topic and the design of the poster is likely far from most people’s mind. I personally as with others try not to downvote…I just leave the odd sarcastic comment instead like a true elder of the internet.

        There’s plenty of manga to downvote if you are feeling a bit trigger finger frustrated. 🤣

      • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        23·
        20 hours ago

        I solve that issue by having down votes disabled, I don’t have the capability to down vote or see negative scores. It honestly made my experience on the platform better as well, because it helps hide the hive mind mentality that the platform as a whole seems to have at times.

        • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          13 hours ago

          I think you missed the point of this - I don’t mind down votes.

          I am just surprised that (some) users will actively use third party software to identify who made them, and then confront them publicly

          • highduc@lemmy.ml
            2·
            13 hours ago

            I don’t think it really matters, just don’t dox yourself and you should be fine.
            Also you can have multiple accounts on different instances and stuff if you want.
            And I don’t think you can tell that much by just upvotes and downvotes. I often times downvote stuff I’ve seen re-posted too much in different instances. I don’t want to see the same thing dozens of times ofc, doesn’t mean I necessarily have an issue with the content.
            Lastly I bet most people don’t use that website anyway. I don’t. What good does it do me to see who downvotes me? If we disagree on something… that’s allowed.

        • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works
          404·
          20 hours ago

          Not the OP, but i find it concerning because this enables creating a very detailed profile of a users interests, political alignment, medical issues, sexual orientation etc. Even if they never post anything! We should all know by now that there are bad actors actively using this kind of data in the worst ways imaginable. In the US this can already have life threatening consequences (ICE raids etc…)

          This is not a good privacy oriented design and it exposes users in a dangerous way.

          EDIT: About lemvotes.org. I like this site because it makes it obvious how dangerous this really is. For example I accidentally upvoted a really disgusting NSFW post misclicking on my phone. This will forever be visible to the world. I’m a documented pervert now. Good job.

          • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            6 hours ago

            Someone can spin up an instance and have votes federated to them anyway, so regardless of whether lemvotes exists or not, people can harvest your information.

          • hansolo@piefed.zipEnglish
            72·
            18 hours ago

            Which is why you shouldn’t put all your interests in one account.

            Have one account for memes and shitposts, then another for bringing down the patriarchy and kinky stuff. OK, so maybe 3 accounts

              • Mesa@programming.dev
                15·
                17 hours ago

                It’s only ridiculous because you’re used to pouring your entire life into Facebook or Google’s servers.

                If you’re disturbed by it being public, I think you should be just as disturbed by it being in the hands of data farmers and merchants.

                The fact of the matter is, nothing you do online is private—and on the spectrum of “how private is it,” social media platforms are traditionally designed to put you at the near zero end of it. So separate your concerns if you want any illusion of separation from your actual life.

                • SirHaxalot@nord.redEnglish
                  1·
                  13 hours ago

                  At least when pouring my shit into Big Tech I can be reasonably sure that it disappears into the ocean of other data they have, and it’s exceptionally unlikely that someone with the access to do so would actually look into me specifically.

                  That any unhinged individual on the internet can pull out more information than strictly necessary about my online history is a completely different threat model. I understand that the federated model requires some level of data sharing to keep track of posts but I would kind of have expected that the instance that “owns” the post would be the only instance that needs this info.

                  On the other hand, I’m sure that absolute privacy like completely hidden post history to some extent will help bad faith actors with troll farms and bots so I don’t fucking know.

                • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  1·
                  13 hours ago

                  You made assumptions about my social media use that are wrong. I don’t interract with them because I don’t like the way they are run and the data they gather will for sure be used against me. I interact with the fediverse because it doesn’t start from a point of abuse, but it can very clearly be abused and I would honestly prefer that this particular information would not be available in any way since it is the most frictionless but also the most potentially exposing way you interact with this platform.

          • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
            8·
            18 hours ago

            I constantly misvote by doing a gesture not exactly right on my phone. I wouldn’t judge anyone by their votes.

          • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
            203·
            20 hours ago

            i find it concerning because this enables creating a very detailed profile of a users interests, political alignment, medical issues, sexual orientation etc. Even if they never post anything!

            So don’t interact. What you read isn’t stored, but if you interact, it should be public.

            For example I accidentally upvoted a really disgusting NSFW post misclicking on my phone.

            I agree that it’s dumb you don’t have a “my votes” page where you can remove that. But you can go to said post and just remove your vote.

            • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              92·
              17 hours ago

              So in a niche community we are now promoting that people don’t interact with said community if they care about their privacy at all?

              • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
                11·
                17 hours ago

                Not at all. I’m saying you should interact and stand behind your interactions.

                For example, you downvoted my post, which is fine. You also replied, which is also fine. Why is it bad that one isn’t on your profile (but it is public) and the other is openly visible in a list on your profile?

                Interactions are by default public, otherwise there’s no point to interacting. I’d go one further and say that having the voting information public but not visible by default is by far the worst option.

        • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
          56·
          21 hours ago

          I had expected reactions to be encrypted, as it’s not a build in feature of Lemmy itself. If it was, I feel like it should have been visible, just like the modlog. There must have been a reason why the Lemmy devs don’t show a list of who up votes or down votes

          • idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            20 hours ago

            If it would be encrypted, it would open up for vote manipulation. There are plans that mods will see who upvotes in their communities. Create multiple accounts on different instances if you need more privacy, separate personalities for different topics.

              • idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works
                7·
                20 hours ago

                If someone has a problem with your alt they can ban it. If votes would be encrypted they would have to defederate the full instance where they come from.

                Create separate accounts for privacy not for vote manipulation

          • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
            18·
            20 hours ago

            Assume that everything you say and do online is public, unless explicitly stated (and proven) otherwise. The advantage of Lemmy (and Reddit in principle) is that your account is anonymous, it is not linked to your person. So you have some freedom to be who you want to be without repurcussions in your daily life.

            • hobovision@mander.xyz
              1·
              8 hours ago

              Yes but it is frighteningly easy to identify users from post history if someone really cares to do it. You either have to never comment about anything personal, including providing your expertise since that can be somewhat unique, or mix in enough bullshit in a way that’s not trivial to separate from the real stuff.

        • Pamasich@kbin.earth
          221·
          21 hours ago

          To be fair OP isn’t the only one that finds it concerning. Kbin/Mbin had tons of complaints about its public voting until the Mbin devs decided to cave and hide downvotes. Piefed also tried to implement private voting before, but gave up because of their halfhearted approach not working out.

          I personally like public votes. It’s great to see who upvoted me, especially if it’s someone I recognize. While I miss being able to see downvotes, because sometimes I do feel like asking for feedback from downvoters on where I could do better.

          That said, there’s an issue of consent there imo. So I do understand the complaints. While a receiving instance is technically free to do with the federated vote what they want, the user never really consented to that. It’s like if an instance made private messages public. Theoretically it’s allowed to, but that doesn’t mean people would be happy about it.

          • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
            4·
            13 hours ago

            To be 1000% clear, the voting agents on piefed worked just fine. They scrapped it because of forum politics. A few terminally online admins got real mad they couldn’t stalk user votes and threatened to defederate, even though they could easily just ban the voting agents if they wanted. They made up a completely absurd and roundabout premise that they needed to be able to preemptively ban people based on votes in case they might make a “harmful comment” in the future. The fact that this was the primary concern indicates that the functionality worked as intended.

            Hopefully someone integrates the same functionality into an app. Honestly I’d take a swing at it if I had a bit more time.

            • Pamasich@kbin.earth
              1·
              10 hours ago

              This is the post I remembered.

              This is what I meant with it failed because their halfhearted approach didn’t work out:

              • Maintaining a list of trusted instances is a pain in the ass.

              They could have just used private voting with every instance, but they just had to segregate them by trust because the good (according to authoritative selection) instances should still be able to see what you voted for, and that was too much work to keep up, so they just scrapped the entire system instead of implementing blanket private voting…

              • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                6 hours ago

                Right, the reason they tried to do the trusted instance nonsense is because of the threat of defederation after some major Lemmy admins threw a tantrum about it. They were cagey about admitting this openly but will basically admit that is the case if pressed.

                Back when they decided to scrap the idea (over back channel discussions with almost zero user input, I might add) I spent some time arguing about the decision, and Blaze basically came out and said that “You are welcome to fork the code and restore the functionality, but nobody would federate with you.” I am paraphrasing, and don’t care to go back and find the comment, but I’m sure someone else can if they are motivated.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      123·
      22 hours ago

      It’s also petty… But knowing that this is so easy to identify people behind vote activity fundamentally changes how I feel about Lemmy

      • BlueKey@fedia.io
        6·
        21 hours ago

        Maybe we should convey to new users more strongly that ActivityPub software “is like a large open place, where you can publish what you want (minus moderated content) and everyone has the ability to see everything you did”.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    171·
    22 hours ago

    I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

    Which community/instance did this? I’d like to block it.

  • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
    1014·
    21 hours ago

    On pyfed, I see your overall “attitude” by default. This is the percentage of positive to negative voting interactions you have had recently. You are presently at 68%, which is rather low.

    The activitypub protocol is not at all private. Anyone with a server and admin account is able to see all of these details.

    Anonymous negativity is actually rather mental and should not exist in any democratic or ethical sense. You have a right to all information, a right to error, a right to skepticism, and a right to protest in nonviolent forms aka the right to offend others. Anonymous negativity is a violation of freedom of information and anti-egalitarian. Everyone has a right to confront their accuser with transparency.

    If you have something to say, you should have the decency of stating it. Downvoting is a mental disorder. It is like people that use four letter expletives to express themselves when they lack the intellectual depth to articulate their thoughts. It only really exists as a corrupt means of artificially influencing behaviors for commercial and political means.

    Is it ethical or reasonable to walk up to a stranger and give them negative feedback. Let’s say you see a man exit his car to walk into a store. Should you have a right to leave an anonymous message on his car about the style of his shirt? Doing such nonsense will get you labeled a halfwit or worse. Take any real life circumstances and transpose this behavior. It is completely unethical nonsense.

    “Trust” as a mechanism, is the primary tool of authoritarians and fascists. That is trash. Democracy and community are built with open transparency and accountability. One is a coward. The other will engage the dialectic and has nothing to hide. My “attitude” is 100% now. I rarely downvote because the behavior fails at fundamental game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma. Negative feedback is incapable of creating positive outcomes. It always brings everyone down. So if you are going to be negative, at least do so constructively in a useful way by articulating your thoughts in text.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      111·
      21 hours ago

      Downvoting is a mental disorder

      I feel like this is what upvotes and down votes are for though. Expressing that you agree, like, or don’t like what someone is doing, or saying is not a mental disorder. I have been on the internet long enough, to know that starting a discussion about something, is almost never really worth it. I do feel that I should be able to join in on a general sentiment of approve or disapprove on a platform like this.

      Should you have a right to leave an anonymous message on his car about the style of his shirt?

      You compare online behavior with real life, and this is not relevant. But to put it into context, I see upvotes and down votes more like cheering or booing in a sports game. It’s just an expression of what you feel for the content. A reaction. You wouldn’t explain why you are booing at the opposing team when they score a goal

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz
        4·
        20 hours ago

        I feel like this is what upvotes and down votes are for though. Expressing that you agree, like, or don’t like what someone is doing, or saying is not a mental disorder. I have been on the internet long enough, to know that starting a discussion about something, is almost never really worth it. I do feel that I should be able to join in on a general sentiment of approve or disapprove on a platform like this.

        This is something where everyone has their own personal idea of what the votes are for. I was taught to think of the votes as relevant (on topic)/irrelevant (off topic) when I first encountered the system.

      • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
        21·
        9 hours ago

        A disorder is a function that causes disruptive distress or deviation from nominal behavior.

        In abstract, I have posited a claim, and then shown how that claim is backed by associative social norms. I am attacking the normalization of anonymous negative behavior at a foundational level. I’m attacking the ethics of the developers that created this system in the first place. I have exemplified how this same behavior is in opposition to human social norms. I have shown its weaknesses in terms of political impact. I have posited a deeply unethical use case of why such a system would be implemented in the first place despite the malevolence. Finally, I have shown how it is destructive and harmful to everyone through statistical analysis using game theory.

        The abstraction is not targeted in any way at people with mental health disorders. I am showing how the feature itself is a disorder or catalyst for disorderly behaviors.

        I have actually tried really hard to remove any forms of bias or personal attacks from my dialog over the last decade or so. Like in this case, I’m actually arguing for positive constructive interactions in a more socially aware architecture. I want to remove the nominalized negativity. It was a mistake to make a space where people are able to abuse others, to manipulate, and to cause harm without social consequences as a feedback mechanism. It is a particularly sharp prejudice to experience when one is in near total social isolation from stuff like physical disability. Allowing people with no independent ethics to treat a space like this as a sadistic release valve for turgid eristics is simply wrong.

  • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
    261·
    20 hours ago

    I was sceptic of the open concept at first. But now I find it appealing, because comment and post history are also public. If people wanted, they could probably extract my living place, job, sexual preferences and political opinions from my comment history of 1,000 comments. So why hide the up- and down votes?

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      142·
      20 hours ago

      This is the point though. Its it’s hidden by the platform, I feel like exposing it in public is against the sentiment

      If voting was public through Lemmy and its clients, it would be more open and not only partly anonymous

      I had assumed that if voting activity was meant to be public, there would have been a feed like the mod logs, for each users activity

      • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
        19·
        20 hours ago

        That’s true, but I think this is more of a development thing than an actual aim of Lemmy. Due to the nature of federation, everything must be open. As the Software is strongly inspired by Reddit, transparent votes is something that is technically exposed via the API but not yet implemented in the UI. But I think any app developer could integrate this into their app if they liked. It seems like Mbin chose a different path way.

        In general, there is no congruent sentiment in Lemmy development, but I agree there should be one or it should be discussed with the community. Have you looked if there is an already ongoing discussion on git?

        I care more about PieFed, but I don’t know how they look on the topic though.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          10·
          18 hours ago

          I just think it should be more obviously transparent, rather than the UI pretending it has no attribution.

          I recall some proposal about adding the info to the UI and objections due to privacy concerns, which is just pretending something is private.

  • dil@lemmy.zip
    32·
    8 hours ago

    I would like if vote counts weren’t shown until after you voted, so it doesn’t influence your opinion

  • K3CAN@lemmy.radio
    231·
    14 hours ago

    Isn’t the Fediverse supposed to be open?

    You can show your personal support for something by upvoting it or your opposition to something by downvoting it, but if you don’t want to take a stance on something at all, you don’t have to.

    It’s an entirely optional mechanic. You can fully utilize Lemmy to view, post, and comment without ever voting if you don’t want to.

    As far as I’m aware, the votes don’t really matter, anyway. Lemmy doesn’t seem to use karma the way that Reddit does. i.e. I’ve never seen a post removed because the user didn’t have enough karma, etc.

    • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      There are communities on certain instances that have auto-moderators that take into account upvotes to ban/unban people.

      Piefed also by default collapses any comment that has a negative vote. if the comment gets downvoted even further, it can even be shadowbanned by being hidden from anyone on Piefed. although you can change that or opt out, if you prefer to see every shitty take. Piefed also places bright warning icons next to the names of anyone with a bad rep. there’s quite a lot of personal control over what you see if you use Piefed.

      image

      • K3CAN@lemmy.radio
        2·
        9 hours ago

        Interesting! Not something I’ve encountered, but I suppose that’s what makes the Fediverse special! We can all control how we want to interact with things.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      13 hours ago

      I agree - I was just surprised to be confronted publicly by a user, for down voting a post. Not that I didn’t want to be exposed, but that people actually could look it up

      • K3CAN@lemmy.radio
        8·
        13 hours ago

        Oh, 100% agree that it’s a bit unhinged to actively call out people because they down-dooted something you posted.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          9 hours ago

          I don’t make it a habit to check, but it has been fun to check and call out in precisely two scenarios.

          • One user and I deep into a sub thread on a multiple day old post arguing about ettiquette here. Was weird to get multiple downvotes on those sorts of comments. They were using their “abandoned” alts.

          • Another thread where I had repeatedly asked someone to share the source for their claim despite them insisting that I just wasn’t googling right. I offered them to edit literally every comment (multiple thousand) on this account to sing their praises. Downvoted with no response.

  • fyrilsol@kbin.melroy.org
    62·
    16 hours ago

    So you can block them. Karma points on the fediverse practically mean nothing as it does not borrow the functionality as they would on Reddit where if you’re downvoted enough times, you will be prevented from posting as frequently. I guess some people, 3 years later, did not get the memo still when they think it’s so rebellious and cool to parade downvotes on someone. It just makes you look petty and childish, really.

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
    19·
    7 hours ago

    If someone is posting about you downvoting them, then they’re a seriously flawed individual. Some people will take any reason they can to call other people racist. I think it’s a fetish, honestly.

    You’re fine.

  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.onlineEnglish
    151·
    17 hours ago

    It’s pretty helpful sometimes when you can see who is brigading and where the majority of downvotes come from. Allows communities to better police themselves.