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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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Other posts have already posted it better than I could, but my tl;dr is: one of the good things about Lemmy compared to the "competition" is that votes are public -- or at least the fact that someone voted is.

I wouldn't mind restricting access to how a user voted, in particular if in the future something like multi-choice upvotes becomes a thing, or even something I'd love to see as is dual-voting ("I downvoted because I don't like it but I upvoted it because you are absolutely right about it", this is absolutely different than not voting at all if the who is voting is being tracked).

But on a fundamental level, in the least instance admins have to be able to know who votes for our version of the system to even work compared to the competition.

[–] kux@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

dual-voting (“I downvoted because I don’t like it but I upvoted it because you are absolutely right about it")

This is the most interesting take i have seen on the matter. it's not a score out of five, why shouldn't you up and down vote the same post?

you make an objectionable but very interesting point?

you are essentially right but you are belligerent and can't spell?

upvote and downvote.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I mean it's basically a consequence that an upvote or a downvote can be for any number of reasons not shared from up- to down- or viceversa, and a simple voting system is ill-equipped to represent or contextualize that. Various solutions are viable, but my perspective is that if up+down-voting is here to stay, that part could be extended so that the act of voting could be this one bit more representative.

[–] kux@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

it seems from a very brief search that likes and dislikes (see link below, i assume they translate to up and down votes) are the extent of what is available so a more nuanced slashdot or steam review type rating is unlikely to be viable.

in any case the ability to upvote and downvote feels like a core differentiating feature to this kind of forum and inbetween measures are unsatisfactory. upvote and downvote anything you like, and everyone can see you doing so, would be an improvement imo on the current implementation.

at least it may be possible in a future version to allow or disallow voting behaviours on a community rather than instance basis?

https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub/Primer/Like_activity

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

“Controversial” is what that would be called. Do we need a third vote instead of double-vote?

[–] sushibowl@feddit.nl 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But on a fundamental level, in the least instance admins have to be able to know who votes for our version of the system to even work compared to the competition.

Could you elaborate on this claim? Because I don't really see why that would be true.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 months ago

Because they have to be able to act upon invalid / spam / bot / brigading voting if it happens. And there is not a reasonable way to do that without knowing the voters (not necessarily the votes) that is not "disable votes for this particular subject".

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

It isn't true. As far as I can tell there is nothing right now which prevents me from sending a fixed, unique token for any give action from my test instance instead of the user string itself. Only comments would require the real user string, for obvious reasons. Likewise, another instance could ban that token, or the user or both. This actually does nothing to change the trust model, but would significantly enhance privacy and reduce the propagation of user telemetry.

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

Right now votes really don't matter in terms of post sorting so I'm not sure if there's really a point to this. As far as I understand it, any vote is engagement in terms of making a post active/hot/whatever