We've made some changes today, and we'd like to announce that our Code of Conduct is no longer in effect. We now have a new Terms of Service, in effect starting from today(October 19, 2023).

The "LAST REVISION DATE:" on the page also signifies when the page was last edited, and it is updated automatically. Details of specific edits may be viewed by following the "Page History" reference at the bottom of the page. All significant edits will also be announced to our users.

The new Terms of Service can be found at https://legal.lemmy.world/

In this post our community mods and users may express their questions, concerns, requests and issues regarding the Terms of Service, and content moderation in Lemmy.World. We hope to discuss and inform constructively and in good faith.

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[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 117 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

The best way to fuck a democratic process up is making votes public. No one should feel like there's a "deterrent" to voting. All that does is create incentive to reward/punish people for how they vote.

Voting is what fuels the content aggregation, too. It is a very bad idea to deter people from voting how they please because it strangles the algorithm of the data it needs to sort the content. You want people voting, a lot. That's what makes the whole thing work.

Edit: which is to say nothing of how bad it will get when people make tools that help automate retaliation for downvotes. You can potentially state an opinion in a comment and set up a bot to auto block every downvoter, then share that list publicly. You may think that sounds like a great system for weeding out hate but I promise you it's going to be far messier than that, and more importantly, this kind of retaliatory shit hurts the aggregation even more.

[–] TheGreatFox@lemm.ee 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Votes on lemmy are inherently public, due to how federation works.

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Votes are public on Lemmy, in the sense that if you have admin access to an instance that is federated you will be able to find who upvoted which posts/comments in the database.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That should really be changed so that you can only see the cumulative votes from any given instance and only a user's specific instance will have records of their individual upvotes and downvotes.

[–] TheGreatFox@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

That would make pushing posts to the top via botting way too easy, and far harder to detect. Federation is intentionally set up so that instances do not trust each other.

[–] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Since upvoting is most of what I do, I think it's great that people can see it was me who upvoted them.

I don't mind the accountability of a downvote at all. If I didn't craft a specific reply, it lets people know who to ask if they genuinely don't understand why their content was problematic.

[–] icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

You can potentially state an opinion in a comment and set up a bot to auto block every downvoter, then share that list publicly.

Shhh dont give them ideas

[–] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No one should feel like there’s a “deterrent” to voting.

. . . It is a very bad idea to deter people from voting

You misread. What I wrote:

deterrent against weaponizing downvotes

Voting and weaponizing downvotes are two very different things.

To be clear, I used the phrase "weaponizing downvotes" to paraphrase the intent behind the written policy I quoted in full. Here it is again:

Do not engage in content manipulation such as posting spam content, vote manipulation through using several user accounts or consistently down-voting a user. Vote for the content, not for the person.

Seems like you have a problem with the policy then, because it is requiring you to self-regulate your own voting, and to specifically NOT vote as you please, but in a way that is best for the community as a whole.