Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).

Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.

Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:

  • Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
  • How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
  • FaceDeer
    2•1 year ago

    It’s not just technically publicly available, though. Anyone can go to an instance that displays it (which is basically all of them) and take a look right now.

    This is a thoroughly unbottled genie, the only way you’re going to get it back inside is if every instance was to agree to hide this information and defederate from any stragglers that don’t. It’s infeasable at this point. IMO hiding the information on a few individual instances is only going to give a false sense of security.

    Whats the completion of the sentence “I think it’s good that everyone can see who up/downvotes them because ___”?

    Then they know the information is out there, and they can use it themselves to spot people who are abusing the system.

    And regardless of whether you think it’s “good”, the information is out there.

    • Coelacanth
      2•1 year ago

      (which is basically all of them)

      This is true for Kbin, but I don’t believe I have come across a Lemmy instance that shows you who up/downvoted you. Hell, as far as I know most Lemmy instances hide “karma” too. You have to check these things from the Kbin side (unless you spin up your own Lemmy instance). Which is the reason this whole thread started.

      the only way you’re going to get it back inside is if every instance was to agree to hide this information and defederate from any stragglers that don’t.

      While it will be impossible to prevent those actively seek out this information, most people will still flock to the largest instances. A percentage of those will be inclined to want to abuse voting info. If the big instances obfuscate it, maybe some amount of harassment can be avoided. Even the friction of having to switch accounts to check will be enough to prevent some heat-of-the-moment reactions.

      IMO hiding the information on a few individual instances is only going to give a false sense of security.

      I guess that’s the trade-off. Having everything easily and openly accessible makes things easy for trolls, stalkers and harassers; obfuscating it might mislead users into thinking they’re anonymous.

      Then they know the information is out there, and they can use it themselves to spot people who are abusing the system

      Thank you for the answer. I’m still not convinced it’s not worth trying to hide it, but that’s a very fair and valid stance.

      And regardless of whether you think it’s “good”, the information is out there.

      That’s true. And regardless of how an instance decides to run it’s voting policy, it’s an important fact to make the users aware of.

      • FaceDeer
        3•1 year ago

        Wasn’t aware Lemmy was missing this information in their UI. I suppose that should satisfy those who want to avoid it, for now anyway.