YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private - eviltoast

Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…

What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

  • noworriesimaracoon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    43·
    1 year ago

    I disagree, a lot of people troll-downvote meaning they downvote content that they don’t like, or just downvote because it’s already low score.

    Is there a valid reason, according to you, to use the downvote button? I’m really interested in knowing.

    • IronKrill@lemmy.caEnglish
      111·
      1 year ago

      The accepted reason for downvoting since early Reddit times is content that either doesn’t contribute to discussion or is factually false. Downvote was never meant to be a disagree button, but I am sure we’ve all broken that rule occasionally.

      • locuester@lemmy.zipEnglish
        81·
        1 year ago

        Exactly. It seems everyone here is of the impression that voting is for agree/disagree. That sucks and it’s simply impossible to fix.

    • sauerkraus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      1 year ago

      Downvoting has always been an indicator that you disagree in some way. Whether it’s a disagreement with the substance or format never mattered. You’ll sometimes see people jump through hoops trying to justify how their form of disagreement is the only valid one though.