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YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private (i.imgur.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml
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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.

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[–] 13 points 3 years ago (2 children)

For sure, people definitely should be educated on what data is open (posts/comments), closed (voting on Lemmy as kbin seems to show them publically), "private" (DMs which are explicitly described as not private and to use Matrix etc. for actual encryption), or secure (Matrix). I feel like a lot of us on Lemmygrad are aware of privacy more than the average netizen, but it wouldn't hurt to have a primer for new users.

I think for social media the best thing would just be compartmentalization of identities, so the usual advice of don't give away too much of who you are and keep usernames separate unless you want them to be connected/known.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    A pinned post with this information would probably go a long way for new users. I didn't know that until you pointed it here :')

    But definitely, being careful with this data can help against brigading and other risks.

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