Right now, downvotes (reduces) don’t federate to (and from?) Kbin instances. This lack of federation makes the downvote counter really inaccurate—a comment that looks like it’s +10 might be -15 when you look at it from lemmy.world.
This leaves me with a few questions:
- Is downvote federation going to be implemented?
- If so, is it a priority or something that’ll happen much further down the line?
- If not, will downvoting be removed?
That just drives me to use instances that dont federate with instances who show that information.
Like. Lets apply that logic elsewhere. I could make an instance that makes your ip address public, because that information is also available. Could stick it next to your username.
Would you use that service? Or do you prefer using an instance who keeps the information they can access private?
Obviously, if my instance was sending my IP address off to other instances, I would get off that instance. However, downvotes are different situation. To my knowledge, for votes to work and be somewhat reliable, instances need to have a user attached to each vote. It would be very problematic if an instance was sending userless votes and other instances were just accepting them without issue. Nothing about the fediverse requires sending my IP off to other instances, whereas votes need to have corresponding users to be trustworthy.
Yes, thank you, obviously my exaggerated example to highlight the point was exaggerated. But you get my point, yes?
E: here, since you responded my just describing the function of how votes work. Lets try a different example.
Servers can track what posts you look at. That is something they can do, and many websites do. Would you be pleased to have every single post you viewed listed on your profile?
Kinda? Your example wasn’t really an exaggeration of the situation with downvotes but a different situation entirely, so it didn’t really address my point. Again, as long as there are downvotes on the fediverse, the people behind them will be visible to anyone who wants to know just by looking at an instance that shows them. Thus, being on an instance that doesn’t show who you downvoted doesn’t make your downvotes more private than if you were on an instance that did.
I 100% get being worried about people seeing who you downvoted, but in that case, I’d suggest being on an instance that just doesn’t have downvotes. Those exist, and I’ve seen plenty of people who prefer things that way.
EDIT: A bit of clarification.
Not having downvotes at all makes the exact reason I dont like kbin even worse. A lack of downvotes is, in part, what made facebook so vividly toxic and rife with hate speech and fake news. When a site lacks upper moderation and a method of inter-community moderation, there is no way to filter out bad content and bad users.
Removing downvotes is something wanted by people who dont want content filtered. Showing downvotes is something wanted by people who want to weaken filters. Weak or nonexistent filters is what allows the worst aspects of the internet to fester and rot.
I did literally say I am drawn towards instances that would refuse to federate with privacy free instances, which includes the ones that make votes public. In the exact same way I would not want federation with instances that make your ip or view history public.
I mean beehaw has no downvotes and they’re not toxic at all if viewed from within their instance.
Understandable. I don’t view showing downvotes as weakening filters—I see how it could deter downvoting to some extent, but in my experience, it leads to people handing out downvotes less freely and when it’s more justified as opposed to not downvoting at all. Nevertheless, I see where you’re coming from, and I want to stress that I think it’s completely fair to not want people to see if you’ve downvoted them.
Note: I don’t think defederating from an instance prevents them from seeing your content (according to this thread), so I’m not sure if defederation would make your votes private.
Detering downvotes weakens downvotes as a filter, by definition. “More justified” means “when I think I wont be scrutinized for the decision,” which means racist content that is walking the line is now unfiltered, at risk of someone yelling at you because they didnt hear the dog whistle. Low but-not-shit quality content is now unfiltered from risk of the small group who disagree (or its creator) harassing you for “insulting” the work by casting a vote on it.
“More justified” is such a nebulous and flimsy take on a panopticon voting system.
If defederation doesnt shield those votes from non admins, then the devs should be working to prevent that. Thats a bad bad bad sign for federation future. Thats a gaping hole in armor against both extremist groups and moderation of content quality.