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I'm starting to see some serious downsides to being able to see who downvotes you. (kbin.social)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A few days ago I downvoted someone's comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I've ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I'm an "obvious" troll account that "apparently just exist to downvote other people". I assure you I'm no troll account, and ironically don't really downvote all that often.
I know the topic of public downvotes has been discussed before, but I never used to care either way. Now I'm kinda leaning in the "I don't like it" side. Honestly, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little offended, maybe even attacked. Also, there goes all my imaginary internet points. Lol
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them, or am I just unlucky?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Also, even if they wanted to I don’t think voting could be made anonymous at this point, either. I’m not a programmer in any sense, but I imagine it would totally break federation. Total anonymity would probably need to be a feature from the start.

Kbin at least puts it out there so you know it’s not totally anonymous. Sometimes I wonder how many lemmy users are unaware of this because the software doesn’t make it apparent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Actually, our downvotes don't federate out, and we don't get incoming downvotes either, so you could totally make them private within an instance since that information doesn't leave the instance anyway.

Not advocating one way or the other, just pointing out that it technically could be an option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hmm... I'm no expert, and probably not even competent at these sort of matters, but the thing that popped to my mind was "something something encryption something something trust". I wonder if this has a smart solution.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

No. The whole point of Federated software is that things happen on one server, and by the very design of the system those things get shared out to other servers. "Things" could be anything from posts to comments to up/down votes.

The only way to have anonymous voting would be to make the up/down votes strictly local to a particular server, which kind of defeats the purpose of a federated system.