Currently, almost anyone in the Fediverse can see Lemmys votes. Lemmy admins can see votes, as well as mods. Only regular Lemmy users can't. Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?

There is a discussion going on right now considering "making the Lemmy votes public" but I think that premisse is just wrong. The votes are public already, they're just hidden from Lemmy users. Anyone from a kbin/mbin/fedia instance can check out the votes if they are so inclined.

The users right now may fall into a false sense of privacy when voting because the votes are hidden from Lemmy users. If you want to vote something and not show up on the vote list, please create another account to support that type of content and don't tell anyone.

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[–] oleorun@real.lemmy.fan 174 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm an instance owner and mod. I'll describe what we see.

Like anyone else, I can check a post or comment and see the upvote and downvote counts. If I click on a specific menu item by a post or comment I can also see who voted which way.

I check it often and to date have only banned two users, out of thousands, who were consistently downvoting posts. These bot accounts were literally voting within seconds of the post going federated.

It's a useful feature on my end and I think others should be able to see it.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 23 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Thamk you for the insight, instance administrator views are valuable and unique.

At the risk of sounding like I'm presenting a bad faith argument, why ban them? I don't like the whole "free market" analogy but surely it's one of the liberating features of federated servers, being able to to largely express your votes or content as you see fit within the legal framework of the host nation. Wouldn't the odd one or two mass downvoters/upvoters/theyvoters ultimately be a statistical abberation or is the fediverse still small enough for this sort of shit to carry weight?

Open criticism of my view welcome, as always!

[–] ericjmorey@discuss.online 60 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're purposely disruptive to the community, they are not part of the community.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That's a strong viewpoint and I appreciate where you're coming from, but how many votedicks does it take to derail a post? I appreciate the fediverse is reasonably small in comparison to othe headline social media sites, but does banning one or two bots or people do enough to save posts from getting bombed?

[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 40 points 2 months ago

If it’s early? One.

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 9 points 2 months ago

with *nz content on my instance, very few

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 28 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If votes are anonymous and federated, it's very easy for me to add or subtract 900 votes from whatever I want.

You should consider anything you do on social media to be public. Even if Facebook tries to claim that it's not.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 6 points 2 months ago

Oh I like a pessimistic view - partly because it makes a discussion spicier, but also because it's important for a user to understand the power that an instance owner wields!

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Admin of a small instance, I have banned 2 accounts for another instance that were downvoting almost all content in a threads without any other interaction. They were being disruptive to the flow at the time, much like @ericjmorey@discuss.online describes.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh man, this is awesome - it's wonderful hearing from the practitioners of the art!

I'm just trying to figure out what driver establishing the tipping point for breaking or the ban hammer - is there any empirical data to drive these decisions, or is the fediverse user base small enough that you act on "feel" or "professional instinct"?

Managing emerging technologies fascinates me so any input - including the germs you've already volunteered - is very much appreciated 👍

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 8 points 2 months ago

For me and my (very - it may be down to just me logging in, but a couple of the communities have a few people that read/vote) small instance it comes down to feel ("Don't be a dick"). Dave, the admin of lemmy.nz (about 80 users per week) has the same in their side board as their "Rule". Dave and I set up our *nz instances in the same week and we chat often. He might not be quire as quick with the ban hammer as I might be though.

When you are this small even a small outside problem can have huge effects on your instance

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 2 months ago

why ban them?

They were describing someone who downvoted everything seconds within the post arriving.

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Lemmy downvotes really have no consequences though, besides user ego.

[–] PopShark@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I agree! I believe seeing who upvoted or downvoted a post aids in identifying rabid downvoters and bots. However, I personally use mobile Lemmy apps and am unable to access that data.