this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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I understand that this information is already basically public but there is a thin barrier to the average nitwit user accessing such information and going in a rampage screwing with people who have downvoted them. I'll say this, if they make it more public I think I will just simply stop voting. I will continue to use Lemmy but only as a passive user.
I don't even run with votes enabled(I can vote but can't see scores) on my clients, but like yeah this will definitely make me second guess any type of interaction with voting for both directions because I don't want to become a target for harassment. It defeats the purpose in my opinion of having the system in the first place if someone can't truthfully vote the way they want.
I think in one sense it can be good. Sometimes it is counterproductive to downvote someone from 1 to 0. I think this would prevent that, as the first downvote is probably the most important one.
But I agree that making any data public will allow everyone to be categorized easily. "This person dislikes this content and likes other content."
Remember, you are giving this info to everyone. Mark Zuckerberg will be able to see what you like and dislike in all public votes.
ActivityPub is designed to be public though. Lemmy's current choice not to display the details of voting information does not prevent Zuckerberg or anyone else running a compatible instance from receiving all those details and looking at them.
As an aside, I currently prefer mbin's style of keeping the vote totals separate. I think it provides more useful context to be able to tell the difference between a post with 0 upvotes and 5 downvotes, and a post with 35 upvotes and 40 downvotes, rather than having them both display -5.
Also, not sure if this is different on Lemmy, but a fresh post is at 0/0, it does not start off with an upvote from the user who posted it. I kind of like that, but I'm not sure how much it matters