Comment on Upvotes and downvotes are public information on Lemmy

• Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Your IP isn’t accessible to anyone but your instance admin, that doesn’t federate.

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  • PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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.

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• Mike_Hunt@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  reddit safer than lemmy lol

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  • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    How is Reddit less secure than Lemmy?

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    • a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      you can be sure that reddit tracks you; often you cant even open it when using a vpn. they have an approximate location from your ip, possible movement data when their client is on your phone, and then they enrich their data with external datasets. those are then sold. reddit is a bit more private than facebook, but not as much as you believe.

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      • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I agree that they track and are shit at privacy. I specifically find it safer because only the company can track me and not the users.

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• Perspectivist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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.

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  • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Blocking is a bandaid to the problem.

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    • Perspectivist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      If a person climbs onto a stage to make a statement, and instead of getting on stage to make a counterpoint someone just shouts “booo” from the audience, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that person to show their face. There’s a certain level of cowardice in simply downvoting without explaining why you disagree. There’s no option to post anonymously here, so it’s not obvious to me that voting should be anonymous either. If people upvote or downvote, they should be willing to stand behind that - and if someone asks for an explanation, you have three choices: ignore them, block them, or explain. I guess there’s also the option to simply not vote at all.

      If it were up to me, I’d hide vote counts from users entirely. It’s not all bad, but I’d argue the net effect is negative. Visible votes encourages toxic behavior. When someone makes a controversial claim, you can first downvote them, then dunk on them in a reply - and now they’re being downvoted into oblivion while you get applause for your smug comment. In reality, nobody’s mind changes. Heavily downvoted comments also prime readers to dislike them before they even read them, instead of approaching with a neutral mindset and then forming their own opinion - or reading further to see other perspectives. As it stands, the system mostly trains people to recognize what’s popular on a platform so they can self-censor to avoid downvotes, and feel validated for shouting down people who voice unpopular opinions.

      So, if someone asks me to explain why I downvoted something, I might explain or I might not - but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask. On the other hand, if someone makes it their personal mission to follow me around and harass me because I downvoted their comment, I think it’s unreasonable to demand the system be changed just so I don’t have to deal with it. There’s already a solution for that: blocking them.

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      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        There’s a certain level of cowardice in simply downvoting without explaining why you disagree.

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        When someone makes a controversial claim, you can first downvote them, then dunk on them in a reply - and now they’re being downvoted into oblivion while you get applause for your smug comment.

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        If someone asks me to explain why I downvoted something, I might explain or I might not

        Dude, pick a lane.

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      • datavoid@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        WHO BOOED? GET UP HERE THIS INSTANT - I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO BOOED!

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• ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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.

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  • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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.

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    • pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I think they are referring to the point that you want your personal votes to be kept private. Some say it is a form of “cowardice” to not vote publicly.

      Personally I see your point is very valid and at least this should be more actively described when signing up for Lemmy and that obviously your instance admins can see everything and you should be very careful (e.g. VPN) if you’d like to participate privately in a conversation. Maybe this is not the right platform for you then ufortunately. Everything in life has its pros and cons and certainly Lemmy is not perfect.

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      • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don’t want just my votes to be private, though. It should be private for everyone. Why are people not seeing that?

        Yes.

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• PunnyName@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Is this a joke? Are you here as some pro reddit propaganda machine?

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  • npdean@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    How is Reddit less secure than Lemmy?

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