Hi again mateys!
As most of you are probably aware, since the development of Lemvotes Lemmy votes are no longer private for users.
The way lemvotes works right now afaik, is it uses an admin level account to collect voting data from all federated instances, thus enabling the identification of every voter. This method effectively bypasses the guardrails the developers put in place to keep this info more restricted.
However, the developer of lemvotes has recently developed an “opt out” for instances that don’t want their user data collected in this way. So now we have a choice of whether or not to continue. For total transparency, I asked the developer to create an opt out because I wanted to give our users the option to choose that path without defederating from the lemvotes instance.
I think there are (at least) two schools of thought on this topic, which I will attempt to succinctly summarize below:
-
Votes should be kept private to users as they were only ever meant to be viewable by instance admins. Making votes public to everyone via lemvotes, when users have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to voting, is a betrayal of user trust. It also leads to arguments and a lot of unnecessary drama, caused by users trawling though each others’ vote histories.
-
It’s good that voting is transparent and that users have the same tools available as admins to conduct their own investigations into other users. This creates a level playing field and helps hold everyone accountable for their voting patterns.
So now you have some of the context, I’d like to ask our community what are your thoughts on lemvotes… is it a social good or a bad idea?
Personally, I quite like it from an admin perspective - it’s a handy tool, and a pretty cool project. But I also have an expectation (mainly from other forms of social media) that users’ votes should be kept private from other users, so I still think it’s problematic from that perspective.
Proposal: To opt out of lemvotes, so that our users’ voting data is kept (at least somewhat) private.
- To vote FOR the proposal to succeed, upvote the post.
- To vote AGAINST the proposal, downvote the post.
This will be a simple majority vote. Similar to the last governance topic, I have no clue what the instance sentiment is towards lemvotes, so let’s find out! Feel free to add your comments below.
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591
This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:
- For:
- Against:
- Local Community: +0.6
- Outsider sentiment: Very Positive
- Total: +4.6
- Percentage: 66.00%
This vote will complete in 6 days
Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
- For:
Against.
I don’t think so, votes are public by nature, and it is useful to be able to find where and how users vote to make judgements based on vote manipulation. I say this as someone who has dealt with huge amounts of vote manipulation in my own communities.
Although the fact they are offering opt outs from instance admins instead of making it censorship/defederation hardened does make me lose faith in the integrity of lemvotes as a service since it no longer will show a majority of votes due to admins opting out.
Against.
- Does not stop voting being public
- Does nothing for privacy, it doesn’t stop how federation sends the info required to vote
- Useful for moderators in communities where they have haters despite being self contained.
- Useful for users to know when they have a dedicated hater/fan.
Against.
To block it would just further a false sense of privacy. The votes are already public, this just makes that data very slightly more accessible. To pretend otherwise is simply burying our heads in the sand.
Against.
A harder question for me is whether or not to get rid of public downvotes altogether. I think most interactions would be less hostile without the downvote option at all.
Against.
Facade of privacy is worse. Opting out won’t do anything, and it might give people false sense of privacy. Let everyone know their votes are public. In my head, voting on lemmy is equivalent of saying “aye” in real life, that is, you are assenting to something publicly.
I in fact consider this to be a feature, it’s helpful in detecting votes manipulation.
Against.
Pretty much eeveeryone have clarified the good reasons Against already, and I share most of them. The one that I want to emphasize more is that regarding this point:
But I also have an expectation (mainly from other forms of social media) […]
Half the point of lemmy is that it’s not like other forms of social media, at least the big ones. This is not Twitter where we know already everyone is nazis, or Reddit where people can just brigand and go bomb-review software projects or stuff like that with impunity. The other half is that it’s federated and public. That, by nature, has to somehow include the votes.
We’re on lemmy. Let’s own it.
For. More privacy > less privacy, even if it’s minimal.
The privacy would be a facade tbh.
I’ve read a few comments here. I’m not sure I fully understand, but,
-
With Lemmyvotes anyone can see anyone’s voting history.
-
Without Lemmyvotes, someone would either need to be an admin (is mod enough?) of an existing federated instance, or they could spool up their own instance to become an admin, which in turn makes them able to see my votes.
Option 2 makes it more work and I’d rather there was a hurdle to seeing my vote history than not.
See Lena (the dev)'s explanation. Option 2 also includes just using Kbin and Mbin.
-
Against
This information is already public. Something like kbin or mbin which already shows votes could theoretically be used to show them for any federated instances anyway. It’s pointless trying to obscure this information as it’s not actually protected in a technical manor. If you didn’t want this information public you chose the wrong platform.
IN FAVOR OF OPTING OUT
Public voting is one of my least favorite features of lemmy/threadiverse.
I don’t know if it’s possible to have a federated network where votes are totally private but it would be a strong preference for me. I thought there were already some tools instances could use to protect their users privacy?
If it is implausible to totally obscure it, then I think we need more user controls to avoid accidentally voting for something that leaves a breadcrumb trail about you. Such as reminding new users their votes are public, having an easy way to see overview of all your own votes, option to remove the vote buttons from the UI, being able to unvote all your past votes (which would still be imperfect of course).
Against. Your comment history is even easier to access and it’s usually much more sensitive. If you really care about anonymity you need a stronger method.
Downvotes are not a slap in the face. They’re the social equivalent of “hey, I disagree with your content or tone”. Really it’s not a big deal to me if they’re public. I’ve downvoted by accident, or changed my mind before and upvoted later.
Now if you’re talking about lemips, a list of user’s ip addresses, that’s a different story.
This data isn’t private in the first place. What point is there in opting out of a pinhole when niagara is right there?
I doubt there’s any practical way to keep votes 100% private, there’s always a workaround. Playing whack a mole on this stupid little thing is not worth it
In my opinion, it’s a good thing. Anyone wanting the information for nefarious purposes only needs to spin up their own instance and they get it. This just gives the tools to everyone easily.
I think the illusion that votes are private should be crushed, because they aren’t and you should be aware of that.
