Comment on YSK Lemvotes.org will show you votes on any post, comment, or by user, or anything on the fediverse
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks agoI just had a realization. A lot of content on the fediverse that we interact with is region specific. A user could have no identifying info in their comments or profile but still get doxxed because they upvoted a post associated with things like their job, their home state, places they frequent, medical conditions.
Do you suppose this got posted today because there is a doxxing project happening right now on 4chan?
YellaLeber@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I have no doubt it’s incredibly easy to dox someone from upvotes alone. Maybe not on lemmy because interactions are just a lot more infrequent, but on reddit if you upvote posts about Omaha Nebraska, retro game collecting, Subaru wrx, and e bikes, you really narrow down your choice of people. If you just had one other bit of information about the user, like just a general photo or where they went to high school you could definitely nail someone down.
I really do hate this part of the Lemmyverse and wish it was all obfuscated. That with it being impossible to delete your posts really limits how much I want to interact with the site.
tal@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
What could be done to limit the amount of information associated with a username is to awitch to a new account periodically.
That’s somewhat unfortunate in that it clashes with reputation, which is also important for making the Threadivwrse work.
Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
This doesn’t really make sense. What you say is only identifying if you already have this information about someone. If you already do have all this info about someone, what else do you need?
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
That is pretty dark. I was hoping the admin would take people’s safety a little more seriously but I guess it’s going to be on us to make sure word gets around a lot more
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
This is a foundational restriction with how federation works and was discussed back during the exodus from reddit when they cut off their API. Votes can’t be federated without identity attached, or you’d end up with a single vote multiplied by however many instances federated it to yours.
This is the price of the fediverse being uncensorable. Everything you do on it is oublic, and norhing can be reliably deleted from the entire fediverse.
There was some efforts to obsfucate voting by one of the m/kbin lemmy alternatives, to have each account have an associated hidden account with a randomly generated name that would technically be the account used for voting, so only the admin of your own instance could connect between your public account identity and your voting identity, but that could also just be defeated by basic pattern identification.
As far as instance admins are concerned, this has been known from the start, and is completely outside of their control. That said, it could definitely use some more signposting for awareness. It’s shocking how often this entire discussion gets repeated by people who apparently never thought to look into how federation actually works.
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
You’re right. I’m pretty sure now that I may have even asked this all before but lost it because I have goldfish memory.