Comment on Lemmy devs are considering making all votes public - have your say
Cataphract@lemmy.ml 4 weeks agoI thought the whole argument was the internet was an echo chamber because of it being anonymous. Look at right-wing groups that employ masks where they can hide their true intentions behind “just being normal citizens”. It’s the groups like “Moms for Liberty” that are outed for their corruption because they have to use a public face during council meetings and such where you can’t be anonymous.
I’m having trouble seeing how downvotes would leads to more harassment. You would have to make sure you’re comfortable with putting your opinion forward just like with commenting. If there’s someone going around downvoting someone relentlessly it will be brought to light for all to see, not hidden like it is now. That would encourage more people to speak up because their detractors would have to do so publicly and without explanation they seem like they’re not bringing anything to the table in the discussion (returning downvotes to their true intention in the process).
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s not just downvotes. Upvotes could be used as well.
That works unless your opinion is the minority. What if there’s someone’s gay in say a location that might put them to death for being gay. And now they can’t even upvote/downvote safely because any action they take could be used against them. Swap out gay for any really where people can be punished IRL for something online.
To what end? What benefit does that bring other then further harassment/bullying? If I actively know someone is downvoting me because I said Batman sucks and they decided to go through my entire post history to downvote everything, what, if anything should the response be? Do we form up a council to start handing out punishment and review cases?
There’s a huge disconnect already from view count, posts/replies, and votes. If you’re going to require that a vote must come with an explanation… you’re going to see engagement drop to 0. This really sounds like the “if you have nothing to hide” that’s thrown around on why governments/police feel the need to pry into everything. Which you might agree with, but I very much don’t. And frankly, I don’t think it’s going to encourage more people to speak up, simply because people just don’t have the time. It’s easy for a person to just upvote/downvote something without saying something, especially if they have nothing to add.
Cataphract@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Gah, way to take it to extreme. You are not private or anonymous on here, if your actions on this platform put you in danger than do not continue to interact thinking it’s completely safe! These things can already be seen, this discussion is about making it show up in every UI by default instead.
If someone is going through your history and downvoting in a harassing way, just block them. They’re not there for discussion and the problem is solved. Without seeing a repeat offender you’ll never know and the harassment can continue. I see discussions being more open honestly, you actually have to take a second to think about your downvote instead of just gut reacting it.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
In my line of work, you need to plan and explore the extremes, else you haven’t planned and covered for everything.
So, going back to my example, say someone is trans/gay, if they can’t safely post/vote then they’re just effectively silenced. And there’s certain parts of the world where that freedom of expression might be very important to them. To safely and freely be themselves w/o worry of punishment. Making it easier to see just makes it easier for them to be discovered. Or when someone is put to death because they spoke out against something… are we going to start posting “We did it Lemmy!”.
Blocking them… means I know for certain it was someone. If I get a few downvotes right now, I can brush it off as random people. But once a name is attached, that’s when it’s going to escalate. And blocking them isn’t going to stop someone. They can just start a new account and continue and for some people, getting blocked is 100% just going to do that. We know this. Video games have been banning people for decades and that literally doesn’t stop them. Right now, votes don’t matter. If we remove that, votes will matter. And again, it’s not going to drive engagement like you think it is, let alone honest engagement. Have you left a response to every vote you’ve ever done explaining in detail why you voted that way in regards to something? If not, you’ve already failed your own ideals.
Cataphract@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Again, please stop saying this removes protections for trans/gay. That information is already public and you’re making it seem like they are currently safe versus what this change would do to them. The blocking scenario is what happens now, you just wouldn’t know they made a new account unless you’re actually able to see it. IDK why you brought video games into this, more often it’s for cheats as trolls and harassment get left unchecked on a lot of platforms. If votes don’t matter now why not change it to a form where they do matter?
If I disagree with something I’ll usually comment or upvote someone who has the same sentiment. I try my best not to petty downvote anything and I don’t understand why you’re stating you have to declare why you upvote, it’s something you find as a contribution, already defined for an intended purpose. This doesn’t take away any meaningful engagement besides mass voting in your scenario, people will still comment who have something to say. I think we just see two different sides of the aisle lol, ty for the discussion btw.