this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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It's not just downvotes. Upvotes could be used as well.
That works unless your opinion is the minority. What if there's someone's gay in say a location that might put them to death for being gay. And now they can't even upvote/downvote safely because any action they take could be used against them. Swap out gay for any really where people can be punished IRL for something online.
To what end? What benefit does that bring other then further harassment/bullying? If I actively know someone is downvoting me because I said Batman sucks and they decided to go through my entire post history to downvote everything, what, if anything should the response be? Do we form up a council to start handing out punishment and review cases?
There's a huge disconnect already from view count, posts/replies, and votes. If you're going to require that a vote must come with an explanation... you're going to see engagement drop to 0. This really sounds like the "if you have nothing to hide" that's thrown around on why governments/police feel the need to pry into everything. Which you might agree with, but I very much don't. And frankly, I don't think it's going to encourage more people to speak up, simply because people just don't have the time. It's easy for a person to just upvote/downvote something without saying something, especially if they have nothing to add.
Throwaways / burner accounts remain a thing that are available for both positive and negative use cases.
In case you're not aware, all your activity via the ActivityPub protocol is already public - it's just that the details are hidden by some front ends. It is already possible for anyone motivated to check your post from a federated instance that displays full vote details, or to host their own instance and receive the raw voting information from places they're federated with.
Yes, you can have communities with higher moderation standards, Beehaw is a great example -- but those are local moderation standards, it does not stop the general public from seeing what's going on as onlookers.
IMO it's no different than most message boards in the earlier days of the Internet. You are pseudonymous, not anonymous, and when you consistently participate on an account, that identity is going to develop a reputation based on how you participate. Upvotes and downvotes just cut down on the kind of low-effort "this", "love this post", "fukkk u omg" replies that would add noise to threads in those days.
Gah, way to take it to extreme. You are not private or anonymous on here, if your actions on this platform put you in danger than do not continue to interact thinking it's completely safe! These things can already be seen, this discussion is about making it show up in every UI by default instead.
If someone is going through your history and downvoting in a harassing way, just block them. They're not there for discussion and the problem is solved. Without seeing a repeat offender you'll never know and the harassment can continue. I see discussions being more open honestly, you actually have to take a second to think about your downvote instead of just gut reacting it.
In my line of work, you need to plan and explore the extremes, else you haven't planned and covered for everything.
So, going back to my example, say someone is trans/gay, if they can't safely post/vote then they're just effectively silenced. And there's certain parts of the world where that freedom of expression might be very important to them. To safely and freely be themselves w/o worry of punishment. Making it easier to see just makes it easier for them to be discovered. Or when someone is put to death because they spoke out against something... are we going to start posting "We did it Lemmy!".
Blocking them... means I know for certain it was someone. If I get a few downvotes right now, I can brush it off as random people. But once a name is attached, that's when it's going to escalate. And blocking them isn't going to stop someone. They can just start a new account and continue and for some people, getting blocked is 100% just going to do that. We know this. Video games have been banning people for decades and that literally doesn't stop them. Right now, votes don't matter. If we remove that, votes will matter. And again, it's not going to drive engagement like you think it is, let alone honest engagement. Have you left a response to every vote you've ever done explaining in detail why you voted that way in regards to something? If not, you've already failed your own ideals.
Again, please stop saying this removes protections for trans/gay. That information is already public and you're making it seem like they are currently safe versus what this change would do to them. The blocking scenario is what happens now, you just wouldn't know they made a new account unless you're actually able to see it. IDK why you brought video games into this, more often it's for cheats as trolls and harassment get left unchecked on a lot of platforms. If votes don't matter now why not change it to a form where they do matter?
If I disagree with something I'll usually comment or upvote someone who has the same sentiment. I try my best not to petty downvote anything and I don't understand why you're stating you have to declare why you upvote, it's something you find as a contribution, already defined for an intended purpose. This doesn't take away any meaningful engagement besides mass voting in your scenario, people will still comment who have something to say. I think we just see two different sides of the aisle lol, ty for the discussion btw.
What do you mean, again? You mean, for the first time? Because either you forgot you never said it or you're trying to gaslight. I can't read your mind. You don't control me, nor anyone else. And do you want me to stop bringing it up because it's hurting your argument? Should I throw in there too, there's countries were you can be put to death for being Atheist? Or speaking out against the government. Why is it important for you to out these people or not consider them, because it very much seems like it's one or the other. Why are you very much against increasing user security/privacy?
It's sort of public, with steps. It should be, not public.
Are you new to the internet? That's not how any of this would work. And I brought games in as an example, hoping to give an example you'd understand, clearly it didn't.
Why should they matter? Why do you very clearly want to see what and how everyone votes? Are we going to implement social scores? If you're upvote count isn't high enough and your ration isn't good enough,... hold on wasn't there a Black Mirror episode with this exact premise?
So, if someone downvotes something, you expect them to defend it... but a simple upvote is perfectly acceptable. Just no, that's never going to happen. Congrats you re-invented Facebook. Only upvotes and no counter feedback.
I'm genuinely lost as to why you're not in favor if increasing security for users. I mean, I've given some simple examples but there's honestly way more reasons why we don't need everyone able to track everyone, to be able to stalk/harass everyone. And "banning" someone will do nothing since anyone who knows that's a possibility, will just have a shadow account to monitor you.
You keep getting heated and bringing up other things that aren't equated trying to make some type of metaphor and it's not connecting for me so I apologize if you're getting frustrated. I don't see the social-score and "you have nothing to hide" being a valid argument that pertains to this discussion and just fear mongering distracting from a simple forum mechanic and a system of interacting with it.
I think the upvote/downvote system is abused by the general user by default when it comes to anonymity and many more are tempted as time progresses. When you're in a crowd you don't boo or cheer anonymously, it's an open public space where people see your actions. More accountability to the people interacting with a system seems like a positive to me.
In regards to the security/protection thing, others have already chimed in and hopefully you understand the data is already tracked and available to those who have a desire for it. My relevant parts where I talked about it before