this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Lemmy
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Votes have always been public though? Nothing about the fediverse is private or secure. It's that way by design. This just makes some features easier to access.
True, but some UI decisions can make good behavior easier, or unhealthy behavior harder. Even if downvotes are technically public already, I think it's a good idea to at least have a little bit of a barrier up, to make it less tempting to check. Having to manually go to lemvotes provides a decent barrier.
This is the first I've heard about it (I'm on piefed myself), but I don't think it's a good idea. People will get snippier when they have this info available to them.
They're visible on other fedi platforms, making it trivially easy for assholes to go looking for who downvoted them anyway. The illusion of safety is a dereliction of duty to users.
Also, downvotes exist to allow large social sites to give the illusion of moderation and user agency while ignoring their duty to actually manage their spaces. They're not needed here, and their existence promotes excessively large and unmanageable communities where people shout into voids and engage with hostility rather than discuss topics with people. Their use and inclusion should be seriously reconsidered.
I agree that it's good to let users know that their votes are public, but I think it would be better to just tell them that (kind of like how Mastodon says "heads up, DMs are not encrypted") and not by also giving them easy access to that information. Simply because if it's easier for more people to do, then more people will be tempted to do it.
I definitely agree that downvotes should be reconsidered entirely. It's basically outsourcing moderation duties to the users, not to mention that people will always incorrectly use it as a "disagree" button.
I'll keep repeating this to everyone who makes this point. Do you think that's okay?
I think it's better for everyone to see this information so no one thinks it's private.
Is there a way to make votes private in the fediverse? Seems tricky given the voting data needs to be visible to every federated server
There is at the server level. The tools that show votes publicly can be defederated from the instance. dbzer0 did it recently with an instance that was felt to be invasive - not sure why it wasn't done for all upvote tracking tools.
Not the OP, but yes I personally do.
Thats what I've always heard.
And you're right, I just stumbled into this by mistake, didn't intend to, wasn't looking for it, it was just right there.
Being so in your face is basically the equivalent of being there for the first time for someone as tech illiterate as I am.