Comment on Upvotes and downvotes are public information on Lemmy
jeena@piefed.jeena.net 7 months ago
Why is public voting a massive privacy and physical threat but public posting and commenting is not?
Both of them are but when a person comments, they willingly put out their opinion in the public. Voting is meant to be anonymous (like irl).
Also, votes have a massive amount as compared to comments. An average user might comment on 1 post for every 50 they vote on (a number I pulled out of my ass)
That is not true. Most votes irl are in fact public to the audience. Did you ever participate in a democratically organized group? Local council votes are usually done by raising hands. Votes in HOA meetings are usually done by raising hands. Your sports club deciding on a new executive and treasurer? Guess what. Raising hands.
On most social media the voting is public, see Facebook/Twitter likes. Hell back in the days of forums you could usually see the list of users that liked a given thread in most of the forum software I ever used. Reddit was the anomaly really
I think piefed has a feature where your votes never leave your instance, so are not exposed in this way (but obviously only appear on your home instance too)
Agree that it should be clearer to people coming from Reddit that that’s how it works though.
The thing is they make it extremely clear that votes are public by letting you see who voted right next to the button.
Lemmy hides this feature and most users don’t know about it.
Voting is meant to be anonymous (like irl).
Says who? Voting/likes are public on a lot of social media sites. The only mainstream ones I can think of where it’s not are YouTube and reddit.
The thing is they make it extremely clear that votes are public by letting you see who voted right next to the button.
Lemmy hides this feature and most users don’t know about it.
Yeah, I agree that this isn’t ideal.
person comments, they willingly put out their opinion in the public.
Yes.
Voting is meant to be anonymous
No.
I feel hat posts/comments are much more of a privacy exposure than any vote.
If the OP wants private voting vs their post/comments then two account would be the solution to that - this is how it is done in the backend on piefed
If you’re a lurker who votes, voting would be your only exposure.
Which only has rather limited information derivable from it. The most “identifying” would be to vote regularly on a community dedicated to your local area.
If you don’t trust your instance with knowing your IP-address, then the issue is not going to be solved by “anonymous voting”. Because your instance has to know if you voted on something or not, so votes cannot be done multiple times. This is unavoidable and equal to the situation when using reddit. Except that you can choose a different instance if you distrust the current instance.
OP either did not think through what he is claiming or he is driven by an agenda.
If you are a lurker that votes then I very little that some random could tie back to your home address or even IP
Both of them are but when a person comments, they willingly put out their opinion in the public. Voting is meant to be anonymous (like irl).
Also, votes have a massive amount as compared to comments. An average user might comment on 1 post for every 50 they vote on (a number I pulled out of my ass)
Voting is only seldom private IRL, only in very specific situations like in very important national elections.
When you vote for what to get for lunch together or for who will be the head of your local football club or who will be the speaker in your school, most of them are public, similarly to Lemmy votes.
The only one tying your votes to your IP-address or the E-Mail you registered with, is your home instance. This is identical to reddit. If you don’t trust your home instance with your IP-address, use a VPN and/or switch to a different instance.
You are making up an issue for lemmy, which you are willing to accept with reddit.
Votes being public is a lemmy specific issue
Voting is meant to be anonymous
You THINK it should be anonymous. I disagree so did Lemmy creators.
The Lemmy creators thought votes should be private, and didn't respond meaningfully to people who tried to tell them that Lemmy votes are not private.
If they're currently retconning it as "Lemmy votes are not private and never were," then that's a step in the right direction I guess, but the fatal flaw was ever following the Reddit model where votes are "supposed" to be private for real. Because as you note it is impossible to do in an ActivityPub system. A lot of people when this was first being discussed, pre-lemvotes, were objecting strongly to the idea of making votes public, because they liked pretending they were private and just not paying any attention to the fact that they weren't. I think mbin still refuses to display downvotes for this (stupid) reason.
(Actually, Piefed did what I thought was a brilliant solution, creating new actors to send out votes with that were different from the comment actors, so that individual users could vote from Piefed and admins could check into it but the votes would not be trivial to associate with the users. IDK why they abandoned it but it seemed like a pretty clever way.)
I’d dare say lemmy creators wouldn’t mind private votes, they chose not to dispolasy voting counts to normal users after all, but that’s not how the ActivityPub protocol is built and honestly can’t be built if you want federated votes.
Also if only voting is so bad, just don't vote. Those votes are not used for anything but ranking in lists for others, you'll not see any difference for yourself if you stop voting.
It is a social forum. Voting and commenting is the core part of the experience.
Yes. So does seeing how you are voting and commenting.
Would be my question as well. It seems quite obvious that if you participate in publicly viewable discussion, that the stuff you do is publicly viewable.
If you don’t want it associated to your physical person, use a VPN and unidentifiable account name.
Reddit is safer than Lemmy. There cannot be witchhunts on lurkers. IP info is not accessible to anyone but the company.
If people are harassing you privately, I’m sure you can message a mod. If you like to express your opinion through votes and adding to the pile but don’t like others knowing you did so, you’re a coward.
I don’t understand why people are calling me a coward. I gave an unpopular opinion, I stood by it and then made a post that might subject my account to scrutiny.
reddit safer than lemmy lol
How is Reddit less secure than Lemmy?
Is this a joke? Are you here as some pro reddit propaganda machine?
How is Reddit less secure than Lemmy?
If someone starts to harrass you due to your voting habits (which I’ve never heard of happening) you can just block them and move on with your life. The difference between someone saying mean things to you and someone writing them is that you can just stop reading.
Blocking is a bandaid to the problem.
Your IP isn’t accessible to anyone but your instance admin, that doesn’t federate.
As long as we're talking about privacy issues on Lemmy, I'm pretty sure that isn't true. I strongly suspect that it would be possible to set up a tool that would post image links, or even just track the accesses for your own avatar, in a way where you could statistically be pretty confident of associating IP addresses with usernames after participating in Lemmy for a while (correlating people accessing your avatar image with replying to particular people's comments and then them replying to those comments, sending DMs to particular people from a not-very-much used account, something like that.)
I think modern versions of Lemmy can proxy images to reduce this, but it's hard enough to do robustly that I would bet that there is some kind of way the information leaks out. It's really hard to prevent this kind of thing even if you're trying hard to make it difficult and the Lemmy devs don't seem to be trying all that hard.
I don't even think image proxying is on by default in Lemmy, although I just checked and this Piefed instance is doing it.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 months ago
dude is just bent out of shape because they got called out for disagreeing Russia should go home and leave Ukraine alone.
lemmy.world/comment/18706617
npdean@lemmy.today 7 months ago
I am not bent out of shape. I said what I said and I stand by it. I am surprised about the public nature of my votes.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Who’s ‘bent out of shape’?
Having to vent his little frustration from NATO fascists losing the war in a totally unrelated discussion about up/downvotes.
Go cry somewhere else.
Or better go volkssturm and go to the Ostfront like your example from the 1940.
You will be dealth with appropriately there.
FelixCress@lemmy.world 7 months ago
One comment and five rubles in your pocket, well done Yuri.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Another original banger from the nazi.
Yawn.
Go volunteer then to the Ostfront like your WW2 heroes so can you get what you deserve and I don’t have to read your boring drivel.
I’ll piss on your grave later
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 7 months ago
You’re misrepresenting what they actually said.
npdean@lemmy.today 7 months ago
New quote added to my journal
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 months ago
No, it's on par with telling someone "Well, you shouldn't keep driving drunk then" or "You should 100% stop contacting her and move on if she keeps instantly blocking you on every new platform you try on." Certain actions really are under voluntary control. We're not telling Russia they really need to shape up that GDP if they want the world to take them seriously. We're asking them to stop deciding to kill innocent people. Seems legit. The obstacle is that they really want to, and they're reluctant to stop.
(The analogy is flawed because there's no real equivalency between driving drunk and maybe rolling the dice on killing one family, and yourself, versus doing it to members of a million families. But the simplicity of the solution is the same.)
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 7 months ago
There’s no real cost to stopping drunk driving. Putin, on the other hand, has gone all in on the war in Ukraine. “Just pull your troops from Ukraine” is about as realistic as “just shoot yourself,” because from his perspective, the outcome is basically the same in both scenarios.
Sure, it would be nice if Russia simply left Ukraine, but put yourself in Putin’s position - it’s a complete non-solution. You don’t fold after going all in. It’s an incredibly naive thing to say, and it ignores the reality and complexity of the situation entirely. It’s a thought-terminating cliché - a feel-good slogan people toss around to avoid critical thinking, while fishing for upvotes from like-minded people.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I mean…I am “they”.
honestly I’m at a loss of even how to respond to your critique. you’re comparing first world problems and the primary request of the Ukrainian government like it’s apples to apples.
I think if either of us is underestimating the complexity of the situation, it’s you.
many of the problems that are plaguing Ukraine right now is Russia. many of the problems plaguing Russia right now is their illegal occupation of Ukraine. the simplest solution right now is for Russia to leave Ukraine. after that, discussions of reciprocity can be held. I use that term loosely here though because Russia is clearly the one at fault and Ukraine has been acting in self-defense, as such Ukraine shouldn’t be required to repay anything to Russia.
also, if you’re coming to Lemmy to have a deep political discussion on the finer points of political discourse (especially on the topic of Russia), you might not be that intelligent. maybe read a book on the subject and find a discussion group at a local library if you want to engage with an intellectual.
remember, these are comments not thesis statements.
npdean@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Ok at the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, why do you think Russia invaded Ukraine?
Mind you, I still think Russia did the wrong thing but there is nuance.
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 7 months ago
By “they,” I’m referring to OP, whose comment you misrepresented with “disagreeing Russia should go home and leave Ukraine alone” - which is not what they actually said.
Another good rule of thumb for online discussion came to mind while reading your response: when someone immediately resorts to ad hominem, they almost certainly don’t know what they’re talking about.
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 months ago
I mean it is kind of a dick move to spy on downvotes and then demand that someone respond to you. The dude is wrong as hell, but I do agree with the overall principle that not every vote needs to be subject to someone getting interrogated as to why they voted that way.
Their shock at finding out that it works that way is, of course, why the currently Lemmy UI is badly designed because it creates the illusion for people that their votes are private. They definitely should not do that.
npdean@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Exactly my point. It is a form of witch-hunt. People are too focused on my views on the Russia-Ukraine than the actual topic.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s not something I usually do, but I’m tired of not calling out people on shitty opinions in regards to fascism. especially when it comes to a simple perspective of “this bad thing is bad”.
it’s like someone downvoting because a comment said “fuck cancer”. like…why? my mind can’t even fathom why anyone would dislike that kind of message unless they themselves are cancer or advocate for the advancement of cancer.
typically I don’t give a shit about downvotes, but it just really rubbed me the wrong way.
npdean@lemmy.today 7 months ago
People are free to their opinions. Not everyone will fit into your concept of ethics. If you are calling out someone for their non-conventional opinion, you are against free speech.
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 7 months ago
Yeah, I get it. You're not wrong.
FelixCress@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I read the thread and it was definitely worth calling him out this time.