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.

  • @GeckoEnglish
    8•1 year ago

    Why would you want to show all information stored on the frontend?

    I’m gonna start out by saying that I don’t know how lemmy’s federation code works. So if I host another instance and federate do I only see the upvote count or also who upvoted? Cause if the only person that can see the count is the admin of the instance the user belongs to, then there’s no need to show it in the frontend. If however all you need to do to see upvote count of all lemmy users, is to host your own lemmy instance, then there should be an easy way to also access that information in the front end to indicate to the user that what they up/down vote is in fact not private.

    So for me whether up/down voting is private is less of an issue as long as it’s clearly communicated. Again if only the instance admin the user is part of can see the count, then that’s essentially “private” as you are trusting that entity already ^^

    • @kunehoEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      If however all you need to do to see upvote count of all lemmy users, is to host your own lemmy instance, then there should be an easy way to also access that information

      I haven’t thought of that, and you may be right on this.

      However, I don’t fully understand this part:

      there should be an easy way to also access that information in the front end to indicate to the user that what they up/down vote is in fact not private.

      But it’s true that my brain today doesn’t really want to work. You mean by some kind of API call can reveal these information?

      • @GeckoEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        However, I don’t fully understand this part:

        there should be an easy way to also access that information in the front end to indicate to the user that what they up/down vote is in fact not private.

        But it’s true that my brain today doesn’t really want to work. You mean by some kind of API call can reveal these information?

        Basically what I meant is some way for the user to see who up/down voted what. Maybe hovering the up/down vote button shows a field you can click on that say votes or something and that then redirects you to a different page that shows who upvoted and downvoted that specific post/comment. The exact details don’t really matter. My point was basically that if something is accessible but only via hidden means that are not obvious to the end-user, they may wrongly assume that information is private. So by making it easily accessible to end-user, you also clearly indicate that that information is publicly accessible ^^

    • @dezmdEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Again if only the instance admin the user is part of can see the count, then that’s essentially “private” as you are trusting that entity already

      Until you get rouge instances or rogue admins on seemingly reliable instances willing to fuck with vote numbers for money. A full open system does help with accountability and the ability to discover corruption/deception by admins. I’d rather have the openness than allow instances to create their own fiefdoms with no externalized accountability in an open federated system like this.

      The scummier versions of old reddit power mods are probably salivating at having their own instance farms to sell upvote services to advertisers and nefarious groups to with the concept of hiding vote details from downstream instances, so it is easier to obfuscate their activities and more difficult for external analysis to discover and expose.

      Keep it all open and just advocate and educate the end users to create anonymized user accounts with unique emails if they want their personal privacy.