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.

  • czech
    16•2 years ago

    Activities are public and easily viewable on kbin. It’s been interesting. Seems mostly positive other than people harassing those who down-vote them demanding explanations.

    • MuddybulldogOPEnglish
      13•2 years ago

      Knowing they’re visible on kbin made me realize that most Lemmy users probably weren’t aware, as it’s non-obvious.

      • theinspectorst
        6•2 years ago

        Yeah, I had a good natured discussion with a Lemmy user on feddit.uk the other day where they were still inexplicably downvoting my responses each time, despite us both being polite and constructive.

        It made me realise that a) they use the downvote button quite differently to how I use it and b) they probably didn’t know that I, as a kbinaut, could literally see they were the one downvoting.

        • WhiteHotaruEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I started a discussion on feddit.de about good discussion practice citing Karl Poppers rules of discussion and the use of the down and upvote buttons.

          I think discussion culture in the Fedivers is quite healthy at the moment.

      • czech
        2•2 years ago

        Yea, good call. I wonder if kbin makes them viewable because the activity pub protocol does not allow them to be easily hidden.

        • @PixelPassport@lemmy.myserv.one
          3•2 years ago

          Seems to be Ernest’s attitude about that sort of thing, he doesn’t like to hide things from the average user that someone more technically inclined would still be able to access

        • @XanXic@lemmy.world
          0•2 years ago

          It’s apparently because it’s Twitter based and Twitter shows likes and such. Kbin doesn’t really have a like upvote downvotes thing. It’s like a favorite and a boost. It’s weird

          • VerifiablyMrWonka
            1•2 years ago

            Not true.

            Both Lemmy and KBin map the same activitypub activities to the same upvote and downvote actions.

    • sab
      -1•2 years ago

      One thing I really like is that it makes it easy to identify users to block. If there’s a post stating that “Nazis are bad” and it has ten downvotes, it’s very easy to use that to block future content from trolls and people I’m not interested in hearing from.

      • deweydecibel
        5•2 years ago

        Yeah, and guess what? They can do that to you.

        Effectively, every single person can use a bot that will automate the blocking of any user that ever downvotes them ever.

        Like if I made a post that says I like Nazis, and then waited for the downvotes to pour in. Add every single one of those names to a block list, share that block list with all of my alts and all of my friends, and suddenly you have a whole army of Nazi sympathizers that are invisible to the users that would downvote them.

        These hand waving excuses about votes being public are really lacking imagination. This is extremely abusable information, and cursory tools can will be put together to make abusing them simple.

        • sab
          2•2 years ago

          I think there are some problems about voting being public. I don’t think this is one of them.

          I don’t mind people blocking me, and if I don’t appreciate the type of content people provide I’ll block them liberally. It’s not necessarily anything personal, I’m just cirating my experience.

          Furthermore, I strive to be on instances where nazi sympathisers would be banned, and where instances tolerating them would be defederated. The only issue is identifying and weeding out troll accounts.

          • @sauerkraus@lemmy.world
            2•2 years ago

            You wouldn’t know that your instance is infested with tankies and fascists. You can’t see their posts because you’re on the block list.

      • newIdentity
        1•2 years ago

        Depends on where it’s posted in. Also this example is pretty low effort. I would downvote it too