I'm going to have to come up with set criteria for when to de-anonomize, aren't I. Dammit.
In the meantime, get in touch if you spot any bigot upvotes coming from PieFed.social and we'll sort something out.
Comment on Private voting has been added to PieFed
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I use people upvoting bigoted and transphobic content to identify other bigoted and transphobic accounts so I can instance ban them before they post hate in to our communities.
This takes away a tool that can help protect vulnerable communities, whilst doing nothing to protect them.
It’s a step backwards
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
The problem is, it’s more than just the upvote. I don’t ban people for a single upvote, even on something bigoted, because it could be a misclick. What I normally do is have a look at the profiles of people who upvote dogwhistle transphobia, stuff that many cis admins wouldn’t always recognise. And those upvotes point me at people’s profiles, and if their profile is full of dog whistles, then they get pre-emptively instance banned.
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Ahh, right, got it.
Let's keep an eye on this. I am hopeful that with PieFed being unusually strong on moderation in other respects that we don't harbor many people like that for long.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
So you can still ban the voting agent. Worst case scenario you have to wait for a single rule breaking comment to ban the user. That seems like a small price to pay for a massive privacy enhancement.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I don’t think you do. Admins can just ban the voting agent for bad voting behavior and the user for bad posting behavior. All of this conflict is imagined.
maegul@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Yea, which is why I think the obvious solution to the whole vote visibility question is to have private votes that are visible to admins and mods for moderation purposes. It seems like the right balance.
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
It will be difficult to get the devs of Lemmy, Mbin, Sublinks, FutureProject, SomeOtherProject, etc to all agree to show and hide according to similar criteria. Different projects will make different decisions based on their values and priorities.
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 4 weeks ago
Plus, if you know your votes are public, maybe it’ll incentivise some people to maybe skip upvoting that kind of content. People use anonymity to say and promote absolute vile things that would never dare say or support openly otherwise.
smeg@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Well it also takes away a tool that harassers can use for their harassing of individuals, right? This does highlight the often-requested issue of Lemmy needs better/more moderation tools though.
maegul@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
If public voting data becomes a thing across the threadiverse, as some lemmy people want.
Which is why I think the appropriate balance is private votes visible to admins/mods.
doctortran@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Admins only. Letting mods see it just invites them to share it on a discord channel or some shit. The point is the number of people that can actually see the votes needs to be very small and trusted.
maegul@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I can see this argument, at least in general. As for community mods, I feel like it’d be generally fruitful and useful for them to be and feel empowered to create their own spaces. While I totally hear your argument about the size of the “mod” layer being too large to be trustworthy, I feel like some other mitigating mechanisms might be helpful. Maybe the idea of a “senior” mod, of which any community can only have one? Maybe “earning” seniority through being on the platform for a long time or something, not sure. But generally, I think enabling mods to moderate effectively is a generally good idea.
shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 4 weeks ago
It actually adds a tool for harassers, in that targeted harassment can’t be tied back to a harasser without the cooperation of their instance admin.
In reality, I think a better answer might be to anonymize the username and publicize the votes.
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Hmm, yes.
PieFed tracks the percentage of downvotes vs upvotes (calling it "Attitude" in the code and admin UI), making it easy to spot people like this and easy to write functionality that deals with them. Perhaps anonymous voting should only be available to accounts with a normal attitude (within a reasonable tolerance).
shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 4 weeks ago
That’s cool. I wonder what my attitude is and I wonder how accurate the score is, if our federations don’t overlap super well. What happens if I have a ton of interactions on an instance that yours is completely unaware of?
(I think “Attitude” is a perfect word, because it’s perceptive. Like, “you say they’re great but all I see them do is get drunk and complain about how every Pokemon after Mewtwo isn’t ‘legit’,” sort of thing.)
smeg@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Feels to me that being able to link what people like/dislike to their comments and username is much more dangerous than just being able to downvote all their comments.
And I’d hope that in this new suggestion an admin would still be able to ban the user even if they only knew the anonymous/voter ID, though that’s probably an interesting question for OP.