Probably for the best if downvotes remain less easy to access, at the very least. There's a myth that people who are suicidal will "find a way even if you take away some of the easier methods", which is explicitly false. If you take away the easy option, you are directly reducing the harm that easy option might have caused. https://gizmodo.com/why-have-people-stopped-committing-suicide-with-gas-5959303

If the admins take away the quick and easy option for seeing who downvoted your passionate comment, the mods are directly reducing the number of people who go on rants about downvotes and targeted vitriol.

It has nothing to do with privacy; this is a public forum that by it's very nature, requires that all activity be easily available to all the sites you federate with. There is not privacy in that.

This is about the type of community that forms around the software. Do we want to encourage, and make easily available, the list of people who disagree with you? Or do we want to to put minor barriers around that to help keep the number of people who do that low?

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure the comparison to suicide holds up. I could just as easily compare it with migration where it is absolutely true that people will find a way to migrate even if you take away the easier methods. It's simply completely different things.

[–] DaGeek247@fedia.io 1 points 2 months ago

Not sure what you mean about migration. People absolutely do move less when it is made harder to move. Mitigation isn't perfect, it never is, but for damn sure it helps.

Just because the wall is dumb as fuck doesn't mean it didn't stop at least a few people from crossing the border.