I was unsure where to cross-post this. But maybe we should discuss this to make sure Lemmygrad users are staying safe? Similar to the unspoken rule that we strongly discourage people using their real names or giving away too many personal details.
cross-posted from: https://mylemmy.win/post/89871
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.
Well, this is a bit uncomfortable. I wasn't aware that votes were shared as well; IIRC an admin said that the occasional downvote brigades we've had couldn't be reversed without losing posts, so I assumed the votes were anonymized somehow ๐
I wonder how feasible it would be to only send an anonymous vote count for every post/comment to other instances, keeping the details within the instance's database only. Federation is already "broken" when an older database has to be restored or even when someone is banned from an instance, so it doesn't seem to be fundamentally necessary for all instances to match
More importantly, is more sensitive data also shared? I would hope that IP addresses, which posts you've viewed, etc. aren't stored anywhere, or at least not forwarded to other instances
That sounds like a good solution to me.
Just knowing that any such data is collected or shared, and when, could help to improve one's privacy.